Episodic memory was first described as the memory system that receives and stores information about events [1]. Since then, studies of episodic memory have tended to use simple, highly controlled stimuli to probe its cognitive and neural underpinnings. By contrast, the study of ‘event memory’ has focussed on memory function in more real-world situations, or used naturalistic stimuli such as movies as a stand-in for reality [2]. Recently there has been an explosion in studies that have combined cognitive experiments using naturalistic stimuli with neuroimaging techniques such as fMRI and EEG, to shed light on how the brain underpins event memory. This review summarises the achievements of these studies and highlights areas that await further work.

The global prohibition of Cannabis was comprehensively enshrined in the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, a measure rooted in the unfounded belief that it was a drug with no medical benefit which was known to cause mental illness. This association with insanity was promulgated in significant measure by the US administration during the early 20th century as part of its drive to form international consensus in favour of prohibition. Criminalizing the drug had the inadvertent effect of promoting domestic production over import in Western countries, as clandestine cultivators in these traditionally non-producer nations sought to breed varieties which would flourish in cooler northern climes. Though representing very different interpretations of the 1961 Single Convention, the US and Dutch prohibition regimes acted in concert to accelerate this process, resulting in domestically-produced, hybridized ‘Skunk’ Cannabis variants which quickly found favour throughout the Western world due to the facility of their clandestine domestic production and their markedly increased potency. Cannabis producers in the West have seen the advantage in selectively breeding in favour of significantly increasing the amount of THC present in the plant. However, increasing THC comes at the cost of reducing the amount of Cannabidiol, a potent anti-psychotic, leading to speculation that this changing ratio is impacting the mental health of users. It is this new form of Cannabis which almost exclusively dominates the medical and latterly recreational marijuana market in the US today. It is also this new form of Cannabis which has been the subject of scientific scrutiny for its genuine, demonstrable link to mental illness. Prohibition, founded in large part on the false association of Cannabis with mental illness, is directly responsible for its metamorphosis into a drug which genuinely merits this association. Any move to revisit Cannabis regulation must take account not only of the increased potential for harm emerging from its modern guise, but, crucially, also consider that the one thing guaranteed to perpetuate the trend is continued criminalization.

Current models of addiction are predicated on the understanding that dopaminergic transmission is the shared substrate of action for addictive drugs. Yet, in recent years, a measure of doubt has been cast over the unified conception of addiction this has fostered, perhaps most directly by a series of studies demonstrating an environmentally-cued double dissociation of stimulant and sedative drugs. Preference for one drug over the other is influenced in opposite directions by the context of use: sedatives are preferred in a home environment, whilst stimulants are preferred outside the home. These results in animal studies have led some to question models of addiction built on unitary notions of drug reward, and the suggestion that they might be reflected in human drug-users is a compelling one. Such a finding would challenge our integrated concept of addiction and lend credence to the notion that addictions to drugs of different classes are separate and distinct from one another. The primary obstacles to approaching this question experimentally in humans would be the many ethical implications of placing large numbers of drug-using participants into prolonged, forced isolation. Yet, as a by-product of the international response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this experiment has now been conducted, with millions of people across the world socially isolating in their homes. Reasoning from laboratory findings, we can predict this widespread change inducing a shift in patterns of drug use, away from stimulant drugs, towards sedative drugs. Early results are indicative of just such a shift. International surveys have shown increases in alcohol and opiate use. Sewage monitoring across Europe has shown reduced cocaine and MDMA use, with a higher consumption of alcohol and benzodiazepines. The US, already in the midst of an opioid crisis, has seen a dramatic rise in suspected overdoses. The picture is far from clear as yet, but the limited data emerging to date align with expectations developed from animal studies, and are initially suggestive of an analogous effect in humans. Should these early signs prove accurate, it would have significant practical implications in terms of policy and treatment approaches, but could also give us reason to question the necessary and sufficient components of our current addiction models. One side-effect of the COVID-19 virus may yet be the necessity of reappraising ‘addiction’ as an umbrella term under which can be grouped an unknown number of neurobiologically distinct conditions.

How food is presented and eaten influences the eating experience. Novel gustatory interfaces have opened up new ways for eating at the dining table. For example, recent developments in acoustic technology have enabled the transportation of food and drink in mid-air, directly into the user's tongue. Basic taste particles like sweet, bitter and umami have higher perceived intensity when delivered with acoustic levitation, and are perceived as more pleasant despite their small size (approx. 20 L or 4mm diameter droplets). However, it remains unclear if users are ready to accept this delivery method at the dining table. Sixty-nine children aged 14 to 16 years did a taste test of 7 types of foods and beverages, using two delivery methods: acoustic levitation, and knife and fork (traditional way). Children were divided into two groups: one group was shown a video demonstrating how levitating food can be eaten before the main experiment whereas the other group was shown the videos after. Our results showed no significant differences in liking of the foods and beverages between the two delivery methods. However, playing the video prior to the test significantly increased the liking and willingness to eat vegetables in the levitation method. Evaluative feedback suggested that a bigger portion size of levitating foods could be the game-changer to integrate this novel technology into real-life eating experiences.

Gender influences people’s behaviour in various ways. This study investigates gendered (im)mobility during cyclone strikes in Bangladesh. During such strikes people have described being unable to move away from environmentally high-risk locations and situations. The Q-based Discourse Analysis used by this study shows how and why gender-roles (im)mobilised people in three coastal locations during the cyclones. People (and especially women) explained that failing to evacuate to the cyclone shelters when a disaster strikes was not uncommon. Gender, or feminine and masculine social roles, played a significant role in these evacuation decisions while facilitating or constraining their mobility. The gendered subjectivities presented different accepted social behaviours and spaces for women and men. In this way, immobility (social, psychological, and geographical) was strongly gendered. Masculine roles were expected to be brave and protective, while female ‘mobility’ could be risky. Women’s mobility therefore ended up being constrained to the home. In other words, when the disaster strikes, everyone did not have the same ability to move. These empirical insights are important to inform climate policy in a way that it better supports vulnerable populations worldwide as they confront global environmental changes today and in the future.

Humans and other animals often use colour to recognise objects regardless of their context – as a measure of material properties rather than of their contrast with a background. Most work on visual communication signals is, however, concerned with colour differences, typically scaled by just noticeable differences (JNDs). Here, we move from the prevailing physiological framework to understand what a given colour or type of colour might tell an animal about an object. To this end, we consider the properties of object colour solids, which represent the colour gamut of reflective materials for a given type of animal eye. The geometry of colour solids reveals general relationships between colours and object properties, which can explain why certain colours are significant to animals, and hence evolve as signals. We define a measure of colour vividness, such that points on the surface are maximally vivid and the ‘grey’ centre is minimally vivid. We show that a vivid colour for one animal is likely to be vivid for others, and highly vivid colours are less easily mimicked than less vivid colours. Furthermore, vivid colours such as black, white, red and blue, as well as pale colours and certain unsaturated shades, are produced by pure or orderly materials. Such materials are created and maintained against entropic processes. Vivid colours are therefore indicative of ecological affordance or biological function, so it is valuable to have low-level psychological biases towards these colours regardless of any specific significance they might have to the receiver.

Educators have proposed that admired behavior by media characters evokes audience emulation if subsequent personal reflection results in audience members realizing that they want to and are able to behave in a similar manner. Two experiments investigated this. In Study 1, exposure to prosocial media models increased altruistic inclinations among teenagers only if they were also instructed to reflect on the personal significance of what they had seen. In Study 2, medical students exposed to prosocial media models had higher empathic and altruistic intentions if they reflected on the personal rather than the professional significance of what they had seen. Personal inspiration and recognition of enactment possibilities seemed key determinants of emulation.

Background: The term ‘burnout’ was first coined in 1974 after it was observed that some healthcare volunteers followed a similar pattern of becoming emotionally tired and losing motivation in their work after unsuccessfully treating patients. Research after these initial observations has improved current understanding of how burnout is developed. Typically, burnout is defined as the end of process of disillusionment with a job where the person becomes less effective in their role.

Introduction: Burnout amongst National Health Service (NHS) surgeons in the United Kingdom (UK) is likely to be negatively impacting the health of those surgeons and the quality of patient care they provide. Leaders appear to have only recently recognised how significant the effects of burnout in surgeons may be. There is no review that holistically explores burnout in this group or what can be done to mitigate the impact of burnout.

Aims: The primary aim was to estimate the prevalence of burnout amongst NHS surgeons between 2000 and 2018. Secondary aims were to evaluate the risk factors, effects and interventions for burnout in NHS surgeons between 2000 and 2018.

Methods:A systematic review was conducted between 21st January and 18th June 2019 according to the preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis protocols (PRISMA-P) guidelines and registered on PROSPERO (registration number CRD42019119900). MEDLINE and Health Management Information Consortium (HMIC) databases were searched for eligible studies. The Appraisal Tool for Cross-sectional Studies (AXIS) was used to critically appraise the quality of studies. Quantitative analysis and qualitative synthesis of results was performed but no meta-analysis was performed due to substantial study heterogeneity.

Results and discussion: There were 2,796 search results returned. After title and abstract screening and full-text review, 10 studies were eligible for inclusion. Included in the analyses were 2,130 surgeons across many surgical specialities. No definitive prevalence rate could be calculated because of varied definitions of burnout. However, by qualitatively synthesising all available prevalence estimates, approximately one third of surgeons appear to have burnout. Many risk factors were identified but centre around a surgeon feeling unable to utilise their professional skills or having a weak support network with inadequate coping strategies. The effects of burnout are wide-reaching and appear to negatively affect surgeons’ health and ability to deliver effective patient care. Individual-focused and organisation-level interventions appear to be able to reduce burnout but require further research to determine the optimal mix and frequency of interventions in the long-term.

Conclusion: Burnout affects approximately one third of NHS surgeons and negatively impacts the surgeons’ health and the quality of patient care they provide. Ensuring trainees’ have realistic expectations of what it means to be a surgeon and improving collaboration between organisations and individuals to help create supportive work environments will likely reduce burnout rates.

Criminal responsibility is founded on the volitional control of action, yet many offences are committed whilst intoxicated. Alcohol is a widely-used intoxicant known to impair behavioural control and memory, opening the door to claims of partial or absent responsibility. Criminal law rules have developed to resist such claims. In particular, findings of criminal responsibility in intoxicated offenders frequently call on ‘prior fault’ logic: the intoxicated offender may claim to have been irrational, but culpability can be imported from their earlier, rational choice to consume intoxicants (Robinson, 1985). That drunkenness does not excuse derives from an unforced choice to become drunk. Yet this raises questions over the extent to which an alcoholic’s choice to drink is unforced. Current neurobiological models of addiction stress compulsion as a primary component, bringing into question the volitional nature of continued consumption (Volkow & Fowler, 2000; Dalley, Everitt, & Robbins, 2011). At the same time, some legal scholars have noted that the potentially fatal nature of alcoholic withdrawal could likewise undermine suggestion that consumption is voluntary, drawing analogy to a defence of duress where actions have been forced under the threat of death (Husak, 1999; Yaffe, 2013). We asked 290 UK Magistrates to consider a criminal sentencing scenario in which evidence of a defendant’s state of intoxication at the time of the offence was presented in tandem with information that they were either teetotal, a casual drinker or an alcoholic. We found that intoxication reduced blameworthiness for criminal acts if the offender had no previous experience with alcohol whilst, in direct contrast, intoxication served to aggravate offending if the defendant was an alcoholic. The likelihood of our defendant receiving a reduced sentence was over ten times greater in the event that, though intoxicated, they were not also an alcoholic. Leniency was blocked by alcoholism despite Magistrates’ qualitative responses suggesting its understanding as a generally mitigating factor, revealing a disconnect between expressed opinion and sentencing behaviour in practice. Our results indicate that, far from excusing drunkenness, the state of being an alcoholic is more frequently deemed to aggravate offending, being associated with harsher sentencing even where the offence in question was committed whilst sober.

Debates continue over whether the prevailing neuroscientific model of addiction as a brain disease informs questions around moral and criminal responsibility, but little empirical work has been conducted with those tasked to address this question in practical terms on a daily basis. We have explored this point over two studies, respectively sampling 110 and 276 Magistrates active in the UK. In the first study we asked them to consider a criminal sentencing scenario in which evidence of a defendant’s brain damage and impaired impulse control was presented. This neurological damage was attributed to either a (fictional) disease or to addiction. When the same neuropsychiatric profile resulted from disease, rather than heroin use and addiction, custodial sentences were significantly reduced. The pivotal factor denying addiction the mitigating power of disease was perceived choice in the initial acquisition; removing choice from addiction dramatically increased the odds of sentence reduction, while attaching choice to disease tended to aggravate or reverse earlier leniency. The second study presented another criminal sentencing scenario in which the defendant exhibited similar neurological impairment, but additionally included ‘mixed’ aetiologies in which either disease led to addiction or addiction led to disease. Our results confirm the dramatic effect which the aetiology of impairment can have on judgements of criminal responsibility, whilst moreover give suggestion that drug-use tips the balance in favour of the punitive element when weighing criminal sentencing decisions.

Simon Taj began drinking heavily on Friday 29 January 2016 and continued into the early hours of Saturday 30 January. At roughly 2 pm on Sunday 31st January 2016, Taj came across the broken-down vehicle of Mohammed Awain. The vehicle was smoking, and Awain was standing beside it. Unfortunately, Taj mistook the wires and equipment he saw in the open boot of Awain’s car (Mr Awain is an electrician) as the components of a terrorist bomb which he was on the point of assembling to explode. Taj called the police, who attended the scene, to find that Awain was entirely innocent. Taj initially drove away following police assurances as to Awain’s innocence, but soon returned, still convinced that Awain was indeed a terrorist. Taj felt that he must do something to stop him. At 2.46 pm, Taj launched a ferocious attack on Awain with a metal tyre lever, almost killing him. When police arrived and restrained Taj, he expressed surprise – ‘why are you arresting me he's the terrorist’. Taj was so calm and lucid at interview, the police officers present did not arrange for blood samples to be taken. He was charged with attempted murder, but claimed to have acted in self-defence on the basis of his mistaken belief.

Our aim was to explore how (neuro)scientific understanding of addiction as a brain-disease impacts criminal sentencing decisions in courts in England and Wales, where legal rules concerning intoxication, prior-fault and mental disease conflict, and sentencing guidelines lack clarity. We hypothesized that despite significant neuropsychiatric overlap of addiction and other brain-disorders, variables in relation to etiology would moderate magistrates’ sentencing decisions in cases involving addicted offenders. Using a questionnaire-based, quantitative design, and combining frequentist and Bayesian analysis approaches, we probed court magistrates’ sentencing decisions, and underlying rationale, for defendants presenting with brain damage resulting from a (fictional) disease, addiction to heroin, or more complex, mixed etiologies. When identical neuropsychiatric profiles resulted from disease, but not heroin addiction, prison sentences were significantly reduced. Study 1 (N=109) found the pivotal factor preventing addiction from mitigating sentences was perceived choice in its acquisition; removing choice from addiction increased the odds of sentence reduction (~20- fold) and attaching choice to disease aggravated or reversed earlier leniency. Study 2 (N=276) replicated these results and found that when heroin use led to disease or vice versa, magistrates found middle ground. These differences were independent of the age of first drug use. Finally, evidence of addiction was more likely to evoke punishment considerations by magistrates, rather than rehabilitation. Consistent with legal rules relating to intoxication but running counter to norms around mental-illness and choice, our results demonstrate the need for greater clarity in sentencing guidance on addiction specifically, and mental disorders more generally.

In the absence of clear sex differences in vocal anatomy, the expression of gender in prepubertal children’s voices has a strong behavioural dimension. However, whether children are sensitive to this gender-related variation in the voice and use it to make inferences about their peers’ masculinity and femininity remains unexplored. Using a cross-modal matching task, thirty-one 7- to 8-year-olds and forty-two adults were asked to associate prototypical voices of boys and girls, and their re-synthesized masculinized and feminized versions, to fictional stereotypically masculine, gender-neutral, and stereotypically feminine child characters. We found that listeners spontaneously associated stereotypically masculine and feminine descriptors of a child character with masculinized voices and feminized voices, respectively. Adults made overall more stereotypical associations and were less influenced by character sex than children. Our observations highlight for the first time the contribution of acoustic cues to gender stereotyping from childhood, and its potential implications for the gender schema literature.

The sensory recruitment model envisages visual working memory (VWM) as an emergent property that is encoded and maintained in sensory (visual) regions. The model implies that enhanced sensory-perceptual functions, as in synaesthesia, entail a dedicated VWM-system, showing reduced visual cortex activity as a result of neural specificity. By contrast, sensory-perceptual decline, as in old age, is expected to show enhanced visual cortex activity as a result of neural broadening. To test this model, young grapheme-color synaesthetes, older adults and young controls engaged in a delayed pair-associative retrieval and a delayed matching-to-sample task, consisting of achromatic fractal stimuli that do not induce synaesthesia. While a previous analysis of this dataset (Pfeifer et al., 2016) has focused on cued retrieval and recognition of pair-associates (i.e., long-term memory), the current study focuses on visual working memory and considers, for the first time, the crucial delay period in which no visual stimuli are present, but working memory processes are engaged. Participants were trained to criterion and demonstrated comparable behavioral performance on VWM tasks. Whole-brain and region-of-interest-analyses revealed significantly lower activity in synaesthetes’ middle frontal gyrus and visual regions (cuneus, inferior temporal cortex), respectively, suggesting greater neural efficiency relative to young and older adults in both tasks. The results support the sensory recruitment model and can explain age and individual WM-differences based on neural specificity in visual cortex.

Background
A social recovery approach to youth mental health focuses on increasing the time spent in valuable and meaningful structured activities, with a view to preventing enduring mental health problems and social disability. In Malaysia, access to mental health care is particularly limited and little research has focused on identifying young people at risk of serious socially disabling mental health problems such as psychosis. We provide preliminary evidence for the feasibility and acceptability of core social recovery assessment tools in a Malaysian context, comparing the experiential process of engaging young Malaysian participants in social recovery assessments with prior accounts from a UK sample.

Methods
Nine vulnerable young people from low-income backgrounds were recruited from a non-government social enterprise and partner organisations in Peninsular Malaysia. Participants completed a battery of social recovery assessment tools (including time use, unusual experiences, self-schematic beliefs and values). Time for completion and completion rates were used as indices of feasibility. Acceptability was examined using qualitative interviews in which participants were asked to reflect on the experience of completing the assessment tools. Following a deductive approach, the themes were examined for fit with previous UK qualitative accounts of social recovery assessments.

Results
Feasibility was indicated by relatively efficient completion time and high completion rates. Qualitative interviews highlighted the perceived benefits of social recovery assessments, such as providing psychoeducation, aiding in self-reflection and stimulating goal setting, in line with findings from UK youth samples.

Conclusions
We provide preliminary evidence for the feasibility and acceptability of social recovery assessment tools in a low-resource context, comparing the experiential process of engaging young Malaysian participants in social recovery assessments with prior accounts from a UK sample. We also suggest that respondents may derive some personal and psychoeducational benefits from participating in assessments (e.g. of their time use and mental health) within a social recovery framework.

ABSTRACT Colour vision mediates ecologically relevant tasks for many animals, such as mate choice, foraging and predator avoidance. However, our understanding of animal colour perception is largely derived from human psychophysics, and behavioural tests of non-human animals are required to understand how colour signals are perceived. Here, we introduce a novel test of colour vision in animals inspired by the Ishihara colour charts, which are widely used to identify human colour deficiencies. In our method, distractor dots have a fixed chromaticity (hue and saturation) but vary in luminance. Animals can be trained to find single target dots that differ from distractor dots in chromaticity. We provide MATLAB code for creating these stimuli, which can be modified for use with different animals. We demonstrate the success of this method with triggerfish, Rhinecanthus aculeatus, which quickly learnt to select target dots that differed from distractor dots, and highlight behavioural parameters that can be measured, including success of finding the target dot, time to detection and error rate. We calculated discrimination thresholds by testing whether target colours that were of increasing colour distances (ΔS) from distractor dots could be detected, and calculated discrimination thresholds in different directions of colour space. At least for some colours, thresholds indicated better discrimination than expected from the receptor noise limited (RNL) model assuming 5% Weber fraction for the long-wavelength cone. This methodology could be used with other animals to address questions such as luminance thresholds, sensory bias, effects of sensory noise, colour categorization and saliency.

Animal coloration patterns, from zebra stripes to bird egg speckles, are remarkably varied. With research on the perception, function, and evolution of animal patterns growing rapidly, we require a convenient framework for quantifying their diversity, particularly in the contexts of camouflage, mimicry, mate choice, and individual recognition. Ideally, patterns should be defined by their locations in a low-dimensional pattern space that represents their appearance to their natural receivers, much as color is represented by color spaces. This synthesis explores the extent to which animal patterns, like colors, can be described by a few perceptual dimensions in a pattern space. We begin by reviewing biological spatial vision, focusing on early stages during which neurons act as spatial filters or detect simple features such as edges. We show how two methods from computational vision—spatial filtering and feature detection—offer qualitatively distinct measures of animal coloration patterns. Spatial filters provide a measure of the image statistics, captured by the spatial frequency power spectrum. Image statistics give a robust but incomplete representation of the appearance of patterns, whereas feature detectors are essential for sensing and recognizing physical objects, such as distinctive markings and animal bodies. Finally, we discuss how pattern space analyses can lead to new insights into signal design and macroevolution of animal phenotypes. Overall, pattern spaces open up new possibilities for exploring how receiver vision may shape the evolution of animal pattern signals.

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is associated with both autonomic dysfunction, notably decreased vagally-mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV), and neurostructural abnormalities. Regional differences in brain morphometry correlate with vmHRV in healthy individuals. Here, we tested the hypothesis that specific focal abnormalities in cortical structure in GAD underpin decreased vmHRV. Adult female patients with GAD (n = 17) and matched controls (n = 18) underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging after characterization of symptoms and quantification of resting vmHRV derived from continuous pulse oximetry. Cortical reconstruction was performed using the FreeSurfer image analysis suite. A priori analysis was conducted only within brain regions involved in vagal control of heart rate. Compared to controls, patients with GAD showed cortical thinning of the (i) left rostral anterior cingulate cortex, (ii) left medial orbitofrontal cortex, and (iii) right isthmus cingulate gyrus. Significant negative relationships were identified between the severity of anxiety symptoms and cortical thickness of the left medial orbitofrontal cortex and right isthmus cingulate gyrus. Compared to controls, patients with GAD showed decreased vmHRV at rest. In controls only, cortical thickness of the left caudal anterior cingulate cortex correlated positively with resting vmHRV. These results extend evidence in GAD for structural abnormalities within cortical areas implicated in emotion regulation and cognition. In addition, these findings may implicate abnormal integrity of anterior cingulate cortex in the psychophysiological expression of GAD and suggest that interventional targeting of this region may normalize autonomic function in GAD.

Influential theories concerning personality argue that many impulsive individuals show physiological underarousal at rest. This interoceptive state is proposed to be egodystonic, motivating impulsive maladaptive actions to enhance arousal. However, there is little empirical research on this matter. The current study tested the relationship between physiological markers of arousal, measures of interoceptive (in)sensitivity, and trait impulsivity in a nonclinical sample of young adults. Experiment 1 investigated whether individuals (N = 31) with high trait impulsivity show decreased resting measures of arousal (indexed from heart rate, heart rate variability, and sympathetic electrodermal activity). Experiment 2 assessed whether trait impulsivity is linked to interoceptive abilities (N = 60). Overall, our results do not provide any compelling support for the underarousal theory of impulsivity. However, impaired interoceptive (cardiac discrimination) accuracy predicted the degree of Barratt nonplanning impulsivity, such that individuals with a better ability to distinguish between internal (bodily) and external signals manifest lower levels of nonplanning trait impulsivity. These findings open an avenue for potential novel interventions aimed at improving planning abilities via better interoceptive discrimination.

In Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), fluctuations in ongoing thoughts (i.e., mind-wandering) often take the form of rigid and intrusive perseverative cognition, such as worry. Here, we sought to characterize the neural correlates of mind-wandering and perseverative cognition, alongside autonomic nervous system indices of central arousal, notably pupil dilation. We implemented a protocol incorporating the dynamic delivery of thought-probes within a functional neuroimaging task. Sixteen individuals with GAD and sixteen matched healthy controls (HC) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging with concomitant pupillometry. Participants performed a series of low-demand tracking tasks, responding to occasional changes in a target stimulus. Such a task is typically accompanied by self-generated, off-task thinking. Thought-probes were triggered based on an individual’s response time (RT) when responding to the change in the target. Subjective reports showed that long RT predicted off-task thinking/mind-wandering. Moreover, long RT and mind-wandering were also associated with larger pupil diameter. This effect was exaggerated in GAD patients during perseverative cognition. Within brain, during both pre-target periods and target events, there were distinct neural correlates for mind-wandering (e.g., anterior cingulate and paracingulate activation at target onset) and perseverative cognition (e.g., opposite patterns of activation in posterior cingulate and cerebellum at target onset in HC and GAD). Results suggest that not only attention systems but also sensory-motor cortices are important during off-task states. Interestingly, changes across the ‘default mode network’ also tracked fluctuations in pupillary size. Autonomic expression in pupillary changes mirror brain activation patterns that occur during different forms of repetitive thinking.

In order to rapidly get the gist of new scenes the brain must have mechanisms to process the large amount of visual information that enters the eye. Previous research has shown that observers can extract the average feature from briefly seen sets of multiple stimuli that vary along a certain dimension (e.g., size), a phenomenon called ensemble perception. This chapter summarizes the research that we have carried out investigating ensemble perception of hue. We have shown that observers can extract and estimate the mean hue of rapidly presented multi-colour ensembles. The ability to average hue may be driven by a subsampling mechanism (i.e. remembering just a few items), but results from autistic adults suggest that it can be modulated by local/global bias.

In non-human animals, creative behaviour occurs spontaneously only at low frequencies, so is typically missed by standardised observational methods. Experimental approaches have tended to rely overly on paradigms from child development or adult human cognition, which may be inappropriate for species that inhabit very different perceptual worlds and possess quite different motor capacities than humans. The analysis of anecdotes offers a solution to this impasse, provided certain conditions are met. To be reliable, anecdotes must be recorded immediately after observation, and only the records of scientists experienced with the species and the individuals concerned should be used. Even then, interpretation of a single record is always ambiguous, and analysis is feasible only when collation of multiple records shows that a behaviour pattern occurs repeatedly under similar circumstances. This approach has been used successfully to study a number of creative capacities of animals: the distribution, nature and neural correlates of deception across the primate order; the occurrence of teaching in animals; and the neural correlates of several aptitudes—in birds, foraging innovation, and in primates, innovation, social learning and tool-use. Drawing on these approaches, we describe the use of this method to investigate a new problem, the cognition of the African elephant, a species whose sheer size and evolutionary distance from humans renders the conventional methods of comparative psychology of little use. The aim is both to chart the creative cognitive capacities of this species, and to devise appropriate experimental methods to confirm and extend previous findings.

Elephants show a rich social organization and display a number of unusual traits. In this paper, we analyse reports collected over a thirty-five year period, describing behaviour that has the potential to reveal signs of empathic understanding. These include coalition formation, the offering of protection and comfort to others, retrieving and ‘babysitting’ calves, aiding individuals that would otherwise have difficulty in moving, and removing foreign objects attached to others. These records demonstrate that an elephant is capable of diagnosing animacy and goal directedness, and is able to understand the physical competence, emotional state and intentions of others, when they differ from its own. We argue that an empathic understanding of others is the simplest explanation of these abilities, and discuss reasons why elephants appear to show empathy more than other non-primate species.

Purpose
Policymakers push online health services delivery, relying on consumers to independently engage with online services. Yet, a growing cluster of vulnerable patients do not engage with or disengage from these innovative services. There is a need to understand how to resolve the tension between the push of online health service provision and unengagement by a contingent of health-care consumers. Thus, this study aims to explore the issue of digital unengagement (DU) (i.e. the active or passive choice to engage or disengage) with online health services to better inform service design aligned to actual consumer need.

Design/methodology/approach
Adopting a survey methodology, a group of 486 health services consumers with a self-declared (acute or chronic) condition were identified. Of this group, 110 consumers were classified as digitally unengaged and invited to write open-ended narratives about their unengagement with online health services. As a robustness check, these drivers were contrasted with the drivers identified by a group of digitally engaged consumers with a self-declared condition (n = 376).

Findings
DU is conceptualized, and four levels of DU drivers are identified. These levels represent families of interrelated drivers that in combination shape DU: subjective incompatibility (misalignment of online services with need, lifestyle and alternative services); enactment vulnerability (personal vulnerabilities around control, comprehension and emotional management of online services); sharing essentiality (centrality of face-to-face co-creation opportunities plus conflicting social dependencies); and strategic scepticism (scepticism of the strategic value of online services). Identified challenges at each level are the mechanisms through which drivers impact on DU. These DU drivers are distinct from those of the digitally engaged group.

Research limitations/implications
Adding to a nascent but growing literature on consumer unengagement, and complementing the engagement literature, the authors conceptualize DU, positioning it as distinct from, not simply a lack of, consumer engagement. The authors explore the drivers of DU to provide insight into how DU occurs. Encapsulating the dynamic nature of DU, these drivers map the building blocks that could help to address the issue of aligning the push of online service provision with the pull from consumers.

Practical implications
This paper offers insights on how to encourage consumers to engage with online health services by uncovering the drivers of DU that, typically, are hidden from service designers and providers impacting provision and uptake.

Social implications
There is a concern that there will be an unintentional disenfranchisement of vulnerable segments of society with a generic policy emphasis on pushing online services. The paper sheds light on the unforeseen personal and social issues that lead to disenfranchisement by giving voice to digitally unengaged consumers with online health services.

Originality/value
Offering a novel view from a hard-to-reach digitally unengaged group, the conceptualization of DU, identified drivers and challenges inform policymakers and practitioners on how to facilitate online health service (re)engagement and prevent marginalization of segments of society.

Introduction: Anomalous experiences are common within the general population, but the frequency and intensity is increased in young people with psychosis. Studies have demonstrated that perceptual biases towards noticing these phenomena plays a role, but the way one thinks about one’s experience (metacognition) may also be relevant. Whilst poor metacognitive function has been theoretically associated with anomalous experiences, this relationship is currently unclear. However, metacognition may work along a continuum with various metacognitive levels, many of which have been demonstrated as impaired in psychosis. These metacognitive components may interact via processes that maintain poor metacognition across levels, and that potentially impact both what people do in their everyday lives (functional outcome) and how people feel about their everyday lives (subjective recovery outcome) in young people with psychosis compared to healthy control participants.

Methods and analysis: This study will investigate the association and contribution of metacognition to anomalous experiences and outcome measures cross-sectionally, and longitudinally in a 36-month follow-up. Firstly, young people with psychosis will be compared with healthy control participants on selected measures of anomalous experience, metacognition, and function, using ANCOVA to identify group differences. Next, the relationship between metacognitive components and processes will be explored, including processes connecting the different components, using regression analyses. Finally, mediation analyses will be used to assess the predictive value of metacognitive measures on outcome measures, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally at 36-months, whilst controlling for symptoms and cognition.

Ethics and dissemination: Ethical and Health Research Authority approval has been obtained through Camberwell St. Giles Research Ethics Committee (reference number: 17/LO/0055). This research project will be reported within a PhD thesis and submitted for journal publication. Once key predictive components of poor outcome in psychosis are identified, this study will develop a series of dynamic models to understand influences on outcome for young people with psychosis.

The integrated model of insight in schizophrenia suggests that poor insight is the result of multiple factors which compromise persons' abilities to integrate streams of information into a personal awareness of psychiatric challenges, and make adaptive responses. This model hypothesizes that metacognitive deficits, or difficulties forming a complex and integrated understanding of the self and others, influence insight, regardless of other proximal causes including clinical profile. To explore this possibility, we performed a latent class analysis on 324 adults with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. This analysis produced 4 groups on the basis of assessment of insight and Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) positive, negative, cognitive, and hostility symptoms. The resultant groups were characterized as: Good Insight/Low Symptoms (n = 71), Impaired Insight/High Negative Symptoms, (n = 43), Impaired Insight/High Positive Symptoms (n = 50) and Impaired Insight/Diffuse Symptoms (n = 160). When we compared metacognitive function as assessed with the Metacognition Assessment Scale-Abbreviated (MAS-A) across groups, we found that the good insight group had better overall metacogni-tion as well as higher levels of self-reflectivity, awareness of the other and mastery as compared to all 3 groups with impaired insight. When controlling for total symptoms, all differences in metacognitive function between the good insight and the impaired insight groups remained significant. These results are consistent with the view that, independent of symptoms, impaired metacognition contributes to difficulties integrating information and hence impedes insight, or awareness of psychiatric challenges. Consistent with extant literature, results suggest that interventions focusing on metacognition as the target may lead to improved insight.

The decision to share resources is fundamental for cohesive societies. Humans can be motivated to give for many reasons. Some generosity incurs a definite cost, with no extrinsic reward to the act, but instead provides intrinsic satisfaction (labelled here as 'altruistic' giving). Other giving behaviours are done with the prospect of improving one's own situation via reciprocity, reputation, or public good (labelled here as 'strategic' giving). These contexts differ in the source, certainty, and timing of rewards as well as the inferences made about others' mental states. We executed a combined statistical map and coordinate-based fMRI meta-analysis of decisions to give (36 studies, 1150 participants). Methods included a novel approach for accommodating variable signal dropout between studies in meta-analysis. Results reveal consistent, cross-paradigm neural correlates of each decision type, commonalities, and informative differences. Relative to being selfish, altruistic and strategic giving activate overlapping reward networks. However, strategic decisions showed greater activity in striatal regions than altruistic choices. Altruistic giving, more than strategic, activated subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC). Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is consistently involved during generous decisions and processing across a posterior to anterior axis differentiates the altruistic/strategic context. Posterior vmPFC was preferentially recruited during altruistic decisions. Regions of the 'social brain' showed distinct patterns of activity between choice types, reflecting the different use of theory of mind in the two contexts. We provide the consistent neural correlates of decisions to give, and show that many will depend on the source of incentives.

Many firms rely on distribution networks to market their products to end-customers, cognizant of the strategic role that channel partners or re-sellers play. Considerable investments are made in building and maintaining engaging relationships through Channel Partner Programs (CPPs). However, partner engagement levels vary widely within CPPs and a one-size-fits all approach to incentive structures for partner engagement may not yield the optimal value. There is a need for in-depth understanding of charting and managing different levels of engagement and examining how these translate into value. We develop a multi-step framework to assist vendors in proactively managing their Engagement-to-Value (E2V) conversion by triangulating different types of readily available empirical data. Within this empirical case study, we conceptualize the notion of E2V and introduce four areas of enquiry pertinent to our framework. First, we assess the value of the CPP in terms of sales and revenue. Second, a more granular analysis takes into account different segments of channel partners in the program. Third, we review these segments in terms of three manifestations of behavioral engagement; recency, frequency and breadth of sales of the product portfolio. Finally, we develop E2V strategies on the basis of the propensity for behavioral engagement at the individual firm level. We conclude with recommendations for customer engagement research and the management of CPPs.

Imitation of actions is widespread in the animal kingdom, but the mental capacities thereby implied vary greatly according to the adaptive function of copying. Behavioral synchrony in social species has many possible benefits, including minimizing predation risk and using food resources optimally, but can be understood by the simple cognitive mechanism of response facilitation by priming. Imitation can send a social message, either one of short-term meshing or group identity. Where the imitative match is opaque, as in neonatal imitation, the correspondence problem may imply an innate system of behavior matching; but in other cases, no more than priming may be involved, although there are persistent suggestions that great ape imitation implies empathic abilities. Imitation in the service of learning new skills by following another’s example can be divided into contextual imitation (when to employ a familiar action, and to what problem) and production imitation (learning of new skills by imitation). Cognitively, the former requires little more than response facilitation, whereas production imitation needs at least the ability to extract the statistical regularities of repeated action and to incorporate the result into hierarchical program-construction. Among our close relatives, only the great apes show much evidence of production imitation of actions, along with the ability to selectively imitate the most rational components of what they observe.

Primates undoubtedly have impressive abilities in perceiving, recognising, understanding and interpreting other individuals, their ranks and relationships; they learn rapidly in social situations, employ both deceptive and cooperative tactics to manipulate companions, and distinguish others’ knowledge from ignorance. Some evidence suggests that great apes recognize the cognitive basis of manipulative tactics and have a deeper appreciation of intention and cooperation than monkeys; and only great apes among primates show any understanding of the concept of self. None of these abilities is unique to primates, however. We distinguish (1) a package of quantitative advantages in social sophistication, evident in several broad mammalian taxa, in which neocortical enlargement is associated with social group size; from (2) a qualitative difference in understanding found in several distantly related but large-brained species, including great apes, some corvids, and perhaps elephants, dolphins, and domestic dogs. Convergence of similar abilities in widely divergent taxa should enable their cognitive basis and evolutionary origins to be determined. Cortical enlargement seems to have been evolutionarily selected by social challenges, although it confers intellectual benefits in other domains also; most likely the mechanism is more efficient memory. The taxonomic distribution of qualitatively special social skills does not point to an evolutionary origin in social challenges, and may be more closely linked to a need to acquire novel ways of dealing with the physical world; but at present research on this question remains in its infancy. In the case of great apes, their ability to learn new manual routines by parsing action components may also account for their qualitatively different social skills, suggesting that any strict partition of physical and social cognition is likely to be misleading.

Monitoring the location of conspecifics may be important to social mammals. Here we use an expectancy-violation paradigm to test the ability of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) to keep track of their social companions from olfactory cues. We presented elephants with samples of earth mixed with urine from female conspecifics that were either kin or unrelated to them, and either unexpected or highly predictable at that location. From behavioural measurements of the elephants’ reactions, we show that African elephants can recognize up to 17 female family members from cues present in the urine-earth mix, and that they keep track of the location of these individuals in relation to themselves.

Animals can benefit from classifying predators or other dangers into categories, tailoring their escape strategies to the type and nature of the risk. Studies of alarm vocalizations have revealed various levels of sophistication in classification [1-5]. In many taxa, reactions to danger are inflexible, but some species can learn the level of threat presented by the local population of a predator [6-8] or by specific, recognizable individuals [9-10]. Some species distinguish several species of predator, giving differentiated warning calls and escape reactions; here we explore an animal’s classification of sub-groups within a species. We show that elephants distinguish at least two Kenyan ethnic groups, and can identify them by olfactory and color cues independently. In the Amboseli ecosystem, Kenya, Maasai warriors demonstrate virility by spearing elephants (Loxodonta africana), but Kamba agriculturalists pose little threat. Elephants showed greater fear when they detected the scent of garments previously worn by Maasai than by Kamba men, and reacted aggressively to the color associated with Maasai warriors. Elephants are therefore able to classify members of a single species into sub-groups that pose different degrees of danger.

BACKGROUND:

Conventionally, involuntary attentional capture by tobacco cues in smokers are seen as an implicit bias, operating independently of current search goals. Prominent attention research, however, has suggested that search goals can induce an involuntary attentional capture. In the current investigation, we tested whether appetitive and aversive smoking images affected attention through such a mechanism and whether there were group differences based on nicotine dependence.

METHODS:

We instructed non-smokers (NS), occasional smokers (OS; low dependence), and nicotine-dependent smokers (NDS; moderate-high dependence), to hold search goals for either an aversive or appetitive smoking category, or a category of non-smoking images. These images were presented in a stream of briefly appearing filler images, while task-irrelevant distractors were presented outside the stream. Distractors could be aversive or appetitive smoking images or a category of non-smoking images. Therefore, in some conditions, the distractors matched the current category being searched for, while in others it was incongruent.

RESULTS:

Task-irrelevant smoking distractors reduced target detection, compared to the non-smoking distractors, only when they were congruent with the specific category being searched for. There was no effect of either aversive or appetitive smoking distractors on performance when participants were searching for the non-smoking targets. Distractor interference did not differ between smokers and non-smokers.

CONCLUSIONS:

The results support a goal-driven mechanism underpinning involuntary attentional capture by smoking cues. These findings can be used to inform models of addiction and attention, and the display of health warnings.

KEYWORDS:

Objective: Emerging evidence suggests that multisensory illusions can modulate pain and can lead to changes in body perception. The aim of this study was to investigate whether contextual factors could explain the analgesic effects of multisensory body illusions on pain and body perception in people with hand osteoarthritis (HOA).

Methods:
In a cross-over study, 28 individuals with painful HOA viewed their most affected hand in and outside of a MIRAGE-mediated reality system, with illusory stretching of the hand and changes in sensory input. The outcome measures were: pain ratings, pressure pain thresholds (PPT), hand function, and the subjective experience of the illusion.

Results: Stretching the hand both inside and outside the virtual environment led to a reduction in subjective pain ratings (all P <.05). Virtual stretching led to changes in body perception (P <.05) with no changes in PPT (all P >.05). Higher pain at baseline predicted susceptibility to the stretch-illusion and mean susceptibility ratings were greatest after the stretch-illusion.

Conclusion: The current study highlights the importance of the context in which pain occurs and in which potential treatments may be applied. In this case, virtual and physical stretching modulating pain, but not viewing the hand alone. The research opens important implications for future research including the use of contextual control conditions and the development of visual feedback interventions for a range of similarly visible chronic conditions for which pain, body image disturbances and body dissatisfaction may be apparent.

Keywords:
Analgesia, body ownership, chronic pain, MIRAGE, multisensory illusions, osteoarthritis, contextual control, body representation disturbance.

Efficient exploitation of large-scale space is crucial to many species of animal, but the difficulties of studying how animals decide on travel routes in natural environments have hampered scientific understanding of environmental cognition. Field experiments allow researchers to define travel goals for their subjects, but practical difficulties restrict large-scale studies. In contrast, data on natural travel patterns are abundant and easy to record, but hard to interpret without circularity and subjectivity when making inferences about when and why an animal began heading to a particular location. We present a method of determining objectively the point at which an animal’s travel path becomes directed at a location, for instance a distant feeding site, based on the statistical characteristics of its route. We evaluate this method and illustrate how it can be tailored to particular problems, using data that is (a) synthetic; (b) from baboons, where travel is from a single sleeping site in an overlapping home range, and (c) from chimpanzees, where sleeping sites are unlimited within a large territory. We suggest that this ‘change- point test’ might usefully become a routine first step in interpreting the decision- making behind animal travel under natural conditions.

With an increase in poaching of elephants (Loxodonta africana) across Africa, it is vital to know exactly how many elephants remain and where they occur, to ensure that protection and management are planned appropriately. From a nationwide survey, we provide current population and distribution data for elephants in South Africa. We consider the viability of elephant populations in the country, as well as some of the management techniques implemented and how effective these are in controlling elephant numbers. According to our surveys, there were 28,168 elephants in South Africa as of December 2015, with 78% of these occurring in the Kruger National Park (KNP) and reserves bordering and open to the Park. Of the country’s 78 discrete that host elephants, 77% have populations of <100 elephants, which could mean they are not genetically viable. We discuss our findings in terms of the conservation value of South Africa’s elephant reserves, and the animal welfare implications. We recommend that the current fragmentation of elephant habitat in the country be addressed through a national elephant management strategy that promotes wildlife corridors between existing, neighbouring elephant reserves.

Female African elephants signal oestrus via chemicals in their urine, but they also exhibit characteristic changes to their posture, gait and behaviour when sexually receptive. Free-ranging females visually signal receptivity by holding their heads and tails high, walking with an exaggerated gait, and displaying increased tactile behaviour towards males. Parous females occasionally exhibit these visual signals at times when they are thought not to be cycling and without attracting interest from musth males. Using demographic and behavioural records spanning a continuous 28-year period, we investigated the occurrence of this ‘‘simulated’’ oestrus behaviour. We show that parous females in the Amboseli elephant population do simulate receptive oestrus behaviours, and this false oestrus occurs disproportionately in the presence of na ̈ıve female kin who are observed coming into oestrus for the first time. We compare several alternative hypotheses for the occurrence of this simulation: 1) false oestrus has no functional purpose (e.g., it merely results from abnormal hormonal changes); 2) false oestrus increases the reproductive success of the simulating female, by inducing sexual receptivity; and 3) false oestrus increases the inclusive fitness of the simulating female, either by increasing the access of related females to suitable males, or by encouraging appropriate oestrus behaviours from female relatives who are not responding correctly to males. Although the observed data do not fully conform to the predictions of any of these hypotheses, we rule out the first two, and tentatively suggest that parous females most likely exhibit false oestrus behaviours in order to demonstrate to na ̈ıve relatives at whom to direct their behaviour.

Modelling is an exciting area of consumer psychology, with application to many problems and contexts. We have covered the founding principles and objectives of the modelling process, which have remained largely unchanged over the course of time. What has changed are the constant innovations in methodologies (especially analyses) and software development that keep pushing the boundaries of modelling. These developments have given rise to some interesting opportunities to work in multidisciplinary teams (especially around exploiting big data in a meaningful way) and to the opening up of new and innovative areas of research in understanding the consumer.

Purpose—This paper explores the current and future role of Augmented Reality (AR) as an enabler of omnichannel experiences across the customer journey. To advance the conceptual understanding and managerial exploitation of AR, the paper synthesises current research, illustrating how a variety of current applications merge online and offline experiences, and provides a future research agenda to help advance the state of the art in AR.

Design/methodology/approach— Drawing on situated cognition theorising as a guiding framework, the paper reviews previously published research and currently deployed applications to provide a roadmap for future research
efforts on AR-enabled omnichannel experiences across the customer journey.

Findings— AR offers myriad opportunities to provide customers with a seamless omnichannel journey, smoothing current obstacles, through a unique combination of i)
embedded, ii) embodied, and iii) extended customer experiences. These three principles constitute the overarching value drivers of AR and offer coherent, theory-driven organising principles for managers and researchers alike.

Originality/value— Current research has yet to provide a relevant, conceptually robust understanding of AR-enabled customer experiences. In light of the rapid development and
widespread deployment of the technology, this paper provides an urgently needed framework for guiding the development of AR in an omnichannel context.

The experience of hearing voices ('auditory hallucinations') can cause significant distress and disruption to quality of life for people with a psychosis diagnosis. Psychological therapy in the form of Cognitive Behavior Therapy for psychosis is recommended for the treatment of positive symptoms, including distressing voices, but is rarely available to patients in the UK. Cognitive Behavior Therapy for psychosis has recently evolved with the development of symptom-specific therapies that focus upon only one symptom of psychosis at a time. Preliminary findings from randomized controlled trials suggest that these symptom-specific therapies can be more effective for distressing voices than the use of broad CBT protocols, and have the potential to target voices trans-diagnostically. Whilst this literature is evolving, consideration must be given to the potential for a symptom-specific approach to overcome some of the barriers to delivery of evidence-based psychological therapies within clinical services. These barriers are discussed in relation to the UK mental health services, and we offer suggestions for future research to enhance our understanding of these barriers.

In the Minimalist Program, language competence is seen to stem from a fundamental ability to construct hierarchical structure, an operation dubbed `Merge'. This raises the problem of how to view hierarchical concept-combination. This is a conceptual operation which also builds hierarchical structure. We can conceive of a garden that consists of a lawn and a flower-bed, for example, or a salad consisting of lettuce, fennel and rocket, or a crew consisting of a pilot and engineer. In such cases, concepts are put together in a way that makes one the accommodating element with respect to the others taken in combination. The accommodating element becomes the root of a hierarchical unit. Since this unit is itself a concept, the operation is inherently recursive. Does this mean the mind has two independent systems of hierarchical construction? Or is some form of integration more likely? Following a detailed examination of the operations involved, this paper shows there are three main ways in which Merge might be linked to hierarchical concept-combination. Also examined are the architectural implications that arise in each case.

Impulsivity received considerable attention in the context of drug misuse and certain neuropsychiatric conditions. Because of its great health and well-being importance, it is crucial to understand factors which modulate impulsive behaviour. As a growing body of literature indicates the role of emotional and physiological states in guiding our actions and decisions, we argue that current affective state and physiological arousal exert a significant influence on behavioural impulsivity. As 'impulsivity' is a heterogeneous concept, in this paper, we review key theories of the topic and summarise information about distinct impulsivity subtypes and their methods of assessment, pointing out to the differences between the various components of the construct. Moreover, we review existing literature on the relationship between emotional states, arousal and impulsive behaviour and suggest directions for future research.

Social psychological research on activism typically focuses on individuals’ social identifications. We complement such research through exploring how activists frame an issue as a social problem. Specifically, we explore anti-abortion activists’ representation of abortion and the abortion debate’s protagonists so as to recruit support for the anti-abortion cause. Using interview data obtained with UK-based anti-abortion activists (N=15) we consider how activists characterised women having abortions, pro-abortion campaigners, and anti-abortion campaigners. In particular, we consider the varied ways in which emotion featured in the representation of these social actors. Emotion featured in different ways. Sometimes it was depicted as constituting embodied testament to the nature of reality. Sometimes it was depicted as blocking the rational appraisal of reality. Our analysis considers how such varied meanings of emotion shaped the characterisation of abortion and the abortion debate’s protagonists such that anti-abortion activists were construed as speaking for women and their interests. We discuss how our analysis of the framing of issues as social problems complements and extends social psychological analyses of activism.

Individual differences in the strategies that control sequential behavior were investigated in an experiment in which participants memorized sentences and then wrote them by hand, in a non‐cursive style. Thirty‐two participants each wrote eight sentences, which had hierarchical structures with five levels. The dataset included over 31,000 letters. Despite the deliberately constrained nature of the task and stimuli, 23 patterns of behavior were identified from the durations of pauses that occurred before the inscription of letters at four chunk levels, spanning letters, words, phrases, and sentences. A critical path task analytic model, Graphical Production of Memorized Sentences (GPoMS), shows that the control of writing relies on cues that continuously switch between motor actions and chunk retrievals in a just‐in‐time fashion at the level of letter information. GPoMS explains the individual differences in terms of variants of a motor production mechanism and variants of a chunk retrieval mechanism, which involve varying degrees of parallelism between cognitive actions and motor actions. A graphical technique for constructing GPoMS models was developed that enabled the estimation of ongoing working memory demands during production.

Recent sensory experience modifies subjective timing perception. For example, when visual events repeatedly lead auditory events, such as when the sound and video tracks of a movie are out of sync, subsequent vision-leads-audio presentations are reported as more simultaneous. This phenomenon could provide insights into the fundamental problem of how timing is represented in the brain, but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Here, we show that the effect of recent experience on timing perception is not just subjective; recent sensory experience also modifies relative timing discrimination. This result indicates that recent sensory history alters the encoding of relative timing in sensory areas, excluding explanations of the subjective phenomenon based only on decision-level changes. The pattern of changes in timing discrimination suggests the existence of two sensory components, similar to those previously reported for visual spatial attributes: a lateral shift in the nonlinear transducer that maps relative timing into perceptual relative timing and an increase in transducer slope around the exposed timing. The existence of these components would suggest that previous explanations of how recent experience may change the sensory encoding of timing, such as changes in sensory latencies or simple implementations of neural population codes, cannot account for the effect of sensory adaptation on timing perception.

The ability to calculate precise likelihood ratios is fundamental to science, from Quantum Information Theory through to Quantum State Estimation. However, there is no assumption-free statistical methodology to achieve this. For instance, in the absence of data relating to covariate overlap, the widely used Bayes' theorem either defaults to the marginal probability driven "naive Bayes' classifier", or requires the use of compensatory expectation-maximization techniques. This article takes an information-theoretic approach in developing a new statistical formula for the calculation of likelihood ratios based on the principles of quantum entanglement, and demonstrates that Bayes' theorem is a special case of a more general quantum mechanical expression.

The widely demonstrated ability of humans to deal with multiple representations of information has a number of important implications for a proposed standard model of the mind (SMM). In this paper we outline four and argue that a SMM must incorporate (a) multiple representational formats and (b) meta-cognitive processes that operate on them. We then describe current approaches to extend cognitive architectures with visual-spatial representations, in part to illustrate the limitations of current architectures in relation to the implications we raise but also to identify the basis upon which a consensus about the nature of these additional representations can be agreed. We believe that addressing these implications and outlining a specification for multiple represen- tations should be a key goal for those seeking to develop a standard model of the mind.

Purpose: This study focuses on the changing nature of healthcare service encounters by studying the phenomenon of triadic engagement incorporating interactions between patients, local and virtual networks and healthcare professionals.

Design/methodology/approach: An 18-month longitudinal ethnographic study documents interactions in naturally occurring healthcare consultations. Professionals (n=13) and patients (n=24) within primary and secondary care units were recruited. Analysis of observations, field notes and interviews provides an integrated picture of triadic engagement.

Findings: Triadic engagement is conceptualised against a two-level framework. (1) The structure of triadic consultations is identified in terms of the human voice, virtual voice and networked voice. These are related to: companions’ contributions to discussions and the virtual network impact. (2) Evolving roles are mapped to three phases of transformation: enhancement; empowerment; emancipation. Triadic engagement varied across conditions.

Research limitations/implications: These changing roles and structures evidence an increasing emphasis on the responsible consumer and patients/companions to utilise information/support in making health-related decisions. The nature and role of third voices requires clear delineation.

Practical implications: Structures of consultations should be rethought around the diversity of patient/companion behaviours and expectations as patients undertake self-service activities. Implications for policy and practice are: the parallel set of local/virtual informational and service activities; a network orientation to healthcare; tailoring of support resources/guides for professionals and third parties to inform support practices.

Originality/value: Contributions are made to understanding triadic engagement and forwarding the agenda on patient-centred care. Longitudinal illumination of consultations is offered through an exceptional level of access to observe consultations.

Purpose: The study aim was to develop a mobile application (app) supported by user preferences to optimise self-management of arm and shoulder exercises for upper-limb dysfunction (ULD) after breast cancer treatment.

Methods: Focus groups with breast cancer patients were held to identify user needs and requirements. Behaviour change techniques were explored by researchers and discussed during the focus groups. Concepts for content were identified by thematic analysis. A rapid review was conducted to inform the exercise programme. Preliminary testing was carried out to obtain user feedback from breast cancer patients who used the app for 8 weeks post-surgery.

Results: Breast cancer patients’ experiences with ULD and exercise advice and routines varied widely. They identified and prioritised several app features: tailored information, video demonstrations of the exercises, push notifications, and tracking and progress features. An evidence-based programme was developed with a physiotherapist with progressive exercises for passive and active mobilisation, stretching and strengthening. The exercise demonstration videos were filmed with a breast cancer patient. Early user testing demonstrated ease of use, and clear and motivating app content.

Conclusions: bWell, a novel app for arm and shoulder exercises was developed by breast cancer patients, health care professionals and academics. Further research is warranted to confirm its clinical effectiveness.

Implications for Cancer Survivors: Mobile health has great potential to provide patients with information specific to their needs. bWell is a promising way to support breast cancer patients with exercise routines after treatment and may improve future self-management of clinical care.

While the mobilisation of pre-existing networks is crucial in psychosocial resilience in disasters, shared identities can also emerge in the absence of such previous bonds, due to survivors sharing a sense of “common fate”. Common fate seems to operate in “sudden-impact” disasters (e.g., bombings), but to our knowledge no research has explored social identity processes in “rising-tide” incidents. We interviewed an opportunity sample of 17 residents of York, UK, who were involved in the 2015-16 floods. Using thematic and discourse analysis we investigated residents’ experiences of the floods, and the strategic function that invocations of community identities perform. We show how shared community identities emerged (e.g., due to shared problems, shared goals, perceptions of vulnerability, and collapse of previous group boundaries), and show how they acted as the basis of social support (both given and expected). The findings serve to further develop the social identity model of collective psychosocial resilience in “rising-tide” disasters. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

We propose a “Value-Dominant Logic” approach to complement HRI research by integrating two well-known user-centric methodologies from the field of marketing. From the results of laddering interviews accompanied by a visual projective technique we show that consumer value perceptions of robots in a retail service environment are of a paradoxical nature where behavioral and social norms are expected of the robot, yet not for the user. Our consumer oriented value-based approach can contribute to the field of HRI by providing a complementary means of user-centered design/ methodology/requirements gathering and additional multidisciplinary collaborations.

Recently, there is a renewed interest in the notion of “the positive effect of negative information” (Ein-Gar et al. 2012). Though intuition suggests negative information should reduce favorability of a persuasive message, this research proposes that this is not necessarily the case, and in fact the addition of negative information to a positive message has the potential to enhance persuasion. This hypothesis is based on a re-examination of the sleeper effect.

Despite their ubiquity in human behaviour, the communicative functions of nonverbal vocalisations remain poorly understood. Here, we analysed the acoustic structure of tennis grunts, nonverbal vocalisations produced in a competitive context. We predicted that tennis grunts convey information about vocalizer and context, similar to nonhuman vocal displays. Specifically, we tested whether the fundamental frequency (F0) of tennis grunts conveys static cues to a player’s sex, height, weight, and age, and covaries dynamically with tennis shot type (a proxy of body posture) and the progress and outcome of male and female professional tennis contests. We also performed playback experiments (using natural and resynthesised stimuli) to assess the perceptual relevance of tennis grunts. The F0 of tennis grunts predicted player sex, but not age or body size. Serve grunts had higher F0 than forehand and backhand grunts, grunts produced later in contests had higher F0 than those produced earlier, and grunts produced during contests that players won had a lower F0 than those produced during lost contests. This difference in F0 between losses and wins emerged early in matches, and did not change in magnitude as the match progressed, suggesting a possible role of physiological and/or psychological factors manifesting early or even before matches. Playbacks revealed that listeners use grunt F0 to infer sex and contest outcome. These findings indicate that tennis grunts communicate information about both vocalizer and contest, consistent with nonhuman mammal vocalisations.

Purpose: Whilst everyday consumption, such as of cosmetics, creates meanings for our being-in-the-world, these meanings appear to be easily over-looked and conceal untapped significance from the experiencing individuals. This study addresses this opportunity for exploring selves in daily transformation, studying cosmetics consumption across key developmental phases of everyday life.

Design/methodology/approach: Phenomenological interviews were employed to investigate individuals' feelings, perceptions and experiences of cosmetics consumption. An iterative process of hermeneutical interpretation was adopted to identify the constellation of past-present-future relations that have underscored the individuals' intentions, motives and purposes.

Findings: This chapter highlights the intricacies of how the self changes on a daily basis. We illustrate how consumers use cosmetic consumption, at a transformational level, to create, redefine and defend aspects of the self and, strategically, to manipulate and even attack others.

Research limitations/implications: Beyond cosmetics consumption, we provide ‘food for thought’ on this very complicated subject-how does mundane consumption potentially address issues of sense of self, and vice versa?

Originality/value: The study highlights an individual's challenges in defining the self and how cosmetics function as a coping mechanism, responding to changes occurring at varying stages of life.

Few attempts have been made to measure the social support received by elderly patients with chronic wounds. To focus research on these issues, an established model integrating the various roles played by social support in the adaptation of patients to stressful situations was applied. Two questionnaires were used to measure perceived social support and coping in a sample of patients with leg ulcers (N = 15, mean age 70.4 years) or diabetic foot ulcers (N = 15, mean age 63.6 years) at two time-points over a four-month period. The results indicate that there were no statistical differences between the groups. The overall levels of social support were low, with emotional support recorded most frequently. The standardised scores for types of coping indicate no unusual patterns, although the scores for logical analysis were low. However, there was considerable variation in the types of coping strategies used by individuals.

Marketers promoting new products online are often faced with the ubiquity of information discounting their marketing messages (e.g. critical responses). However, the counterintuitive sleeper effect posits that negative information can positively impact attitudes under certain conditions (Gruder et al. 1978). Elaborative encoding is expected to modify the sleeper effect by enhancing the persuasiveness of marketing messages accompanied by discounting cues (Mazursky and Schul 1988). The current study investigates the conditions necessary for negative information to have a positive impact on attitudes.

There is a global shift towards a blending of care delivery within formal and informal environments in direct response to economic and demographic pressures. Homecare is at the hub of this activity, enabling people to age in place and keeping families intact. However, our understanding of patient and carer needs is fragmented; understandably so, given the complexity of these needs. This descriptive review offers a content analysis of papers focused on patients' and carers' needs and homecare published between January 2010 and October 2013. It is evident that homecare is an intensely researched area, yet it is disjointed. Emerging research emphasizes the need to take a holistic approach. Firstly, incorporating emotional psychosocial and cultural elements will help to draw together our current understanding within a more cohesive framework. Secondly, tensions that hinder communication and collaboration between stakeholders must be resolved. Thirdly, information and communications technology is rapidly becoming synonymous with homecare, and offers solutions for facilitating care delivery, collaboration, and training of future professionals. The rate of international activity promises much for future research collaborations to compare, contrast, and identify best practices for the future of homecare as we endeavor to meet the ever-increasing pressures on health and social care systems.

Purpose: The authors identified the need for a cross-disciplinary research view of issues to ensure an integrated citizen-centric support to achieve optimal health of individual citizens and, in particular, the role of informatics to inform and coordinate support towards integrated and holistic care.

Method: An Exploratory Workshop was approved and sponsored by the European Science Foundation. Twenty-three participants from 15 countries attended, covering a full range of health, social care and informatics professions and disciplines.

Results: The participants found strong common ground in identifying key issues to be addressed if citizens with compromised health are to receive integrated and coordinated support to a common set of objectives, while also ensuring appropriate choice and support for citizen, family and other informal carers. At the same time, optimal health was identified as a fundamental human right, and that achieving this is a necessary priority of a caring society. Moreover, Europe has a commitment to researching and developing health informatics (e-health), though not yet giving a priority to this integration of health and social care. Specifically the following main informatics challenges to be addressed were identified: (1) to identify available information and communication needs related to different scenarios of use in the intersection between health and social care, (2) to develop and map shared ontologies, and standards for integration and/or brokerage, (3) to enable planned information access and sharing, shaping a system of trust where the patient is an active partner and policies are established considering all partners/interests, (4) to investigate the use of automatic/intelligent knowledge based and context-relevant services, and (5) empowering the citizen (or their selected agent) as co-producer through modern informatics tools, while carefully avoiding selective disempowerment of the most vulnerable.

Conclusion: The Exploratory Workshop resulted in a unanimous Declaration for action, which is presented appended to this paper.

The role of social support in promoting recovery from chronic illness has been the focus of a debate within the nursing and social science research communities This paper reviews the literature on this important issue and discusses the implications for patient management In providing holistic patient care, health care professionals need to reflect on the impact of this research for their clinical practice.

The Internet has opened up new virtual communal spaces for consumers to congregate and address issues of mutual interest. Such virtual communities of interest offer consumers the opportunity to exchange experiential and technical information relating to their shared field of interest. Of the sectors in which virtual communities of interest have emerged, health care has witnessed a proliferation of condition-related communities. Providing health care consumers with the opportunity to share experience and expertise, these communities provide a range of new value propositions offering health care consumers opportunities to undertake self-service activities independent of health care professionals. Utilising the concept of the service encounter as a framework, this paper explores patterns of consumer participation in and utilisation of virtual communities in supporting service consumption. It examines the way in which these permissible spaces act as a virtual parallel service influencing consumer practice in the formal service encounter. For health care consumers and professionals, the utilisation of such space has significant implications for the shape of the service encounter in the information society.

Purpose: Internet forums are an important arena for information exchange between consumers. Despite healthcare being one of the most accessed information categories on the internet, knowledge of exchange between patients in online communities remains limited. Specifically, little is known about how patients negotiate knowledge in online forums to understand and manage their diseases. This paper aims to illustrate this by presenting data that demonstrate the construction of tacit knowledge within online health communities, and how consumers exercise their “voice” within complex professional services.

Design/methodology/approach: This paper reports an exploratory single case study of an online discussion forum for breast cancer sufferers, in which participants discuss their experience with healthcare services and related pharmaceutical products. Textual data were collected and analysed from the forum retrospectively from an 11-month period, entailing contributions from 252 participants.

Findings: The paper challenges prevalent managerial and professional perspectives that evaluate online health information in terms of its correspondence with conventional medical information. In the absence of normative assumptions that broadly guide health service encounters, forum participants negotiate their understandings in the context of their personal experience.

Practical implications: This novel culture offers potential for developing rich and sometimes more appropriate understandings of health than available from the medical establishment. It discusses how service providers can exploit such opportunities towards improving service provision, facilitating the consumer voice within a complex service.

Originality/value: Re-evaluating the value of online forums, the paper identifies the mechanisms through which health consumers co-create knowledge within online communities, and how these mechanisms can inform and complement future service provision.

This paper delineates the main characteristics of the evolution of the organization as a social business in response to the socially networked marketplace. We advance the notion that the modern day firm is increasingly organized as a community according to the principle of collaboration. The main message is that the prominence of organizational structure is not redundant but needs to be complemented by collaborative community in response to market demands. In order to fulfill this complementary role, the concept of organization is profoundly changing. Based on recent theorizing, we review the role of collaborative community as a key characteristic of social business, provide an overview of its principles, show how social media can effectively facilitate and support collaborative community, and introduce the concept of expressive individuality. We provide illustrative examples that feature Dell. We conclude by identifying an agenda for further academic inquiry, and by specifying a large number of issues that researchers may address.

Channel Reward Programs (CRPs) facilitate relationship management within reseller networks in distribution channels, yet a persistent problem is that rewards are not seen as valuable, which can reduce program investment. By applying Regulatory Fit theory, to understand how to sustain goal orientation (promotion or prevention) and stimulate task engagement through a match with the manner of goal pursuit, this study demonstrates that the presentation style suppliers adopt influences resellers' perceptions of reward value and their rate of point redemption with respect to CRPs. Two field studies demonstrate the mechanisms driving this effect. First, fit effects result from the interaction between reward type and presentation format (i.e., verbal vs. numerical) and affect perceived reward values and investment decisions. Second, cognitive engagement and “feeling right” about reward redemption mediate the effects of fit on investment opportunity evaluations. In turn, the findings demonstrate that CRP efficacy can be enhanced by stimulating regulatory orientations that match the presentation formats of the reward and that the dual affective–cognitive processes affect probabilistic judgments of rewards. This additional mechanism can further stimulate resellers' engagement with and investment in CRPs within complex decision-making contexts.

The interactive nature of the Internet has boosted online communication for both social and business purposes. However, individual consumers differ in their predisposition to interact online with others. Whereas an impressive stream of research has investigated media interactivity, the existence of individual differences in the use of different online media, that is, differences in general online social interaction propensity, has so far received less research attention. An individual’s predisposition to interact online affects many important consumer behaviors, such as online engagement and participation. Thus, in this paper, we propose and conceptualize general online social interaction propensity as a trait-based individual difference that captures the differences between consumers in their predisposition to interact with others in an online environment. Based on eight studies, we develop and validate a scale for measuring general online social interaction propensity and demonstrate its usefulness in understanding diversity in levels of engagement and in predicting online interaction behaviors.

Health self-management tools, believed to provide effective and cost-efficient healthcare, are often rejected by consumers. Regulatory focus theory (Higgins 2014) could facilitate adoption patterns of such tools by positioning adoption as matching/mismatching individual motivational concern: promotion/prevention focus. This research proposes that people perceive products as inherently promotion or prevention oriented, and matching person orientation to product orientation enhances tool uptake. The paper outlines the development of a scale measuring promotion/prevention characteristics of objects, providing evidence for dimensionality, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity. The resulting PM-PV scale allows promotion/prevention categorization for personal healthcare tools with potential for wider generalization.

Online communities provide promising opportunities to support patient-professional negotiations that address the asymmetries characterizing health services. This study addresses the lack of in-depth understanding of these negotiations, what constitutes successful negotiation outcomes, and the potential impact of negotiation on offline health behaviors. Adopting a netnographic approach, two threads were observed from each of four online health communities focusing on breast cancer, prostate cancer, depression, and diabetes, respectively. This analysis was supplemented with 45 in-depth interviews. The evidence suggests that online health communities can be constructed as permissible spaces. Such virtual spaces facilitate the type of patient-professional negotiations that can redress asymmetries. The critical elements of the negotiation process are identified as occupation, validation, advocacy, and recording. These support patients and professionals as they debate and resolve conflicts in how they experience health. Direct tangible offline negotiation outcomes are reported (e.g., changes in treatment plans). Implications for professional-patient partnerships are also explored.

Technological developments in retail service delivery raise new questions concerning the nature of relationships between retailers and customers. Through an online survey based on established dimensions of relationships, this study examines how customers perceive a range of technologically mediated and face-to-face retail relationships in comparison to core social relationships. From a combination of mapping and statistical techniques, retail relationships emerge with distinctly different profiles. Respondents regard technologically mediated relationships as less friendly and co-operative but more task-orientated than their human-to-human counterparts. This analytical approach presents valuable diagnostic information for benchmarking and evaluation of marketing performance, offering opportunities to develop the strengths of existing relationships, draw on relevant benefits from the analogous relationships, and promote a more distinctive relational position.

How do consumers manage their everyday self-presentation to attain a sense of wellbeing? Through the lens of consumption, this study contributes to understanding the link between self and everyday interactions by identifying and developing a typology of wellbeing challenges and how these are managed in a variety of social contexts. Fifteen phenomenological interviews revealed a series of strategy narratives through which individuals pursue wellbeing within their web of social encounters. These strategy narratives combine in a series of pathways that range from harmonious (e.g., enhancement) to incongruous (e.g., concealment) in individuals' efforts to manage challenges to personal wellbeing. Constructing a typology from these pathways, the research findings pose both opportunities and challenges for social marketers to promote consumers' positive experiences in the marketplace.

The shift in the accessibility of positive and negative information about consumer products on the internet calls for a revisiting of persuasion effects. A counterintuitive effect, called the sleeper effect, predicts attitudes toward a persuasive message have the potential to increase in favorableness despite the presence of information discounting the message. An experimental study was conducted to support the existence of the sleeper effect, demonstrate its renewed relevance in the contemporary advertising environment, and provide a foundation for further sleeper effect studies.

Policymakers, consumer advocate groups, and researchers agree that consumers need to increase their proenvironmental behaviors if a decent standard of living is to be ensured for future generations. Despite high levels of environmental concern, consumers still refrain from large-scale adoption of proenvironmental behaviors. Social marketers agree that a change in attitudes is not enough to stimulate the necessary behavioral change and are looking for ways to help consumers overcome the costs (e.g., price premiums, inconvenience) that are often associated with proenvironmental behaviors. Currently, consumers often see proenvironmental behavior as a trade-off between short-term personal benefits and longer term collective benefits. The authors contribute to the social marketing literature on proenvironmental behavior by introducing the concept of Consumer Environmental Stewardship (CENS), which centers on the use of intrinsic motivation to stimulate a personal sense of responsibility for the environment. The findings, based on a survey and three experiments, show that the stimulation of consumers’ affinity with future generations (AFGs) and perceived consumer effectiveness (PCE) can help to promote CENS, which in turn raises proenvironmental behaviors. However, this research also shows that increasing levels of AFGs can backfire and result in lower levels of CENS, if consumers experience low levels of PCE.

Retailers increasingly recognize that environmental responsibility is a strategic imperative. However, little research has investigated or identified the factors that facilitate the successful implementation of environmentally responsible strategies across a network of customer-facing sales units (stores). We propose that a store manager’s ability to lead by example facilitates this process by fostering a supportive climate for store environmental stewardship (SENS-climate). By examining the influence of store managers’ actions on sales associates’ perceptions of the SENS-climate, as well as the subsequent impact on their performance—measured by margins, as well as sales of green and regular products—this study demonstrates that store managers can foster a SENS-climate by articulating their prioritization of environmental responsibility in their operational decisions. These positive effects are sustained by relational factors, such as the moderating effect of the store manager–sales associate dyadic tenure. In contrast, when store managers display high variability in their environmental orientation, it hinders the development of SENS-climate perceptions among sales associates. If sales associates perceive an enabling SENS-climate, they achieve higher margins and more green but fewer regular sales.

Driven by the proliferation of augmented reality (AR) technologies, many firms are pursuing a strategy of service augmentation to enhance customers’ online service experiences. Drawing on situated cognition theory, the authors show that AR-based service augmentation enhances customer value perceptions by simultaneously providing simulated physical control and environmental embedding. The resulting authentic situated experience, manifested in a feeling of spatial presence, functions as a mediator and also predicts customer decision comfort. Furthermore, the effect of spatial presence on utilitarian value perceptions is greater for customers who are disposed toward verbal rather than visual information processing, and the positive effect on decision comfort is attenuated by customers’ privacy concerns.

Interoception is the sense through which internal bodily changes are signalled and perceived. Individual differences in interoception are linked to emotional style and vulnerability to affective disorders. Here we test how experiential sleep quality relates to dimensions of interoceptive ability. 180 adults (42 ‘non-clinical’ individuals, 138 patients accessing mental health services) rated their quality of sleep before performing tests of cardiac interoception. Poor sleep quality was associated with lower measures of interoceptive performance accuracy, and higher self-report measures of interoceptive sensibility in individuals with diagnoses of depression and/or anxiety. Additionally, poor sleep quality was associated with impaired metacognitive interoceptive awareness in patients with diagnoses of depression (alone or with anxiety). Thus, poor sleep quality, a common early expression of psychological disorder, impacts cardiac interoceptive ability and experience across diagnoses. Sleep disruption can contribute to the expression of affective psychopathology through effects on perceptual and interpretative dimensions of bodily awareness.

Sleep disturbances are routinely encountered in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and affect about 25–40% of patients in the mild-to-moderate stages of the disease. In many, sleep pathology may represent a symptom of the underlying neurodegeneration. However, a history of sleep disruption occurring years prior to onset of cognitive symptoms could represent a potential risk factor for AD. The aim of the present narrative review was to evaluate current evidence linking sleep disturbances with AD development and to understand the mechanisms that may contribute to this. Although the mechanisms by which poor sleep may contribute to AD genesis is not fully understood, emerging evidence linking disturbances in the sleep wake cycle with Aβ deposition is shedding light on the relationship between sleep pathology and the subsequent development of AD. Aβ burden appears to be enhanced by sleep-wake cycle disruptions and is suspected as being an important mechanism by which sleep disruptions contribute in AD development. Other mechanisms triggered by sleep disruption may also be involved in AD development, such as brain hypoxia, oxidative stress, circadian activity rhythms disturbances, overexpression of orexins, and blood-brain barrier impairment. Further understanding of the link between sleep disturbances and future development of AD is still needed before sleep disturbances are clearly marked as a preventable risk factor for AD. In these circumstances, early lifestyle interventions to help increase the quantity and quality of sleep may have a favorable outcome on decreasing the incidence of AD and this needs to be investigated further.

Background: Few studies have examined smoking and female sexual difficulties. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between current tobacco smoking and sexual difficulties in Australian men and women.

Methods: Data for this study came from the Second Australian Study of Health and Relationships (2012–13), which includes a representative sample of 18 427 sexually active Australian adults (aged 16–69 years). The main study and outcome measures were tobacco smoking and sexual difficulties. A multiple logistic regression analysis was conducted to adjust for potential confounders.

Results: Male heavy smokers (>20 cigarettes per day) were significantly more likely than non-smokers to have trouble keeping an erection [adjusted odds ratio (AOR) 4.14, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.87 – 9.20; P < 0.0001], lack interest in having sex (AOR 2.18, 95% CI 1.20 – 3.97; P = 0.011), have anxiety about performance (AOR 2.46, 95% CI 1.24 – 4.86; P = 0.010) and be unable to come to orgasm (AOR = 2.81, 95% CI 1.23–6.42; P = 0.015). Female smokers were also significantly more likely than non-smokers to not find sex pleasurable (AOR 1.48, 95% CI 1.05 – 2.07; P = 0.025); and light female smokers were significantly more likely than non-smokers to be unable to come to orgasm (AOR = 1.44, 95% CI 1.05–1.98; P = 0.025).

Conclusions: Current tobacco smoking was associated with sexual difficulties in both men and women. For women, even light smoking was associated with not finding sex pleasurable and being unable to come to orgasm.

Feedback processing is critical to trial-and-error learning. Here, we examined whether interoceptive signals concerning the state of cardiovascular arousal influence the processing of reinforcing feedback during the learning of ‘emotional’ face-name pairs, with subsequent effects on retrieval. Participants (N = 29) engaged in a learning task of face-name pairs (fearful, neutral, happy faces). Correct and incorrect learning decisions were reinforced by auditory feedback, which was delivered either at cardiac systole (on the heartbeat, when baroreceptors signal the contraction of the heart to the brain), or at diastole (between heartbeats during baroreceptor quiescence). We discovered a cardiac influence on feedback processing that enhanced the learning of fearful faces in people with heightened interoceptive ability. Individuals with enhanced accuracy on a heartbeat counting task learned fearful face-name pairs better when feedback was given at systole than at diastole. This effect was not present for neutral and happy faces. At retrieval, we also observed related effects of personality: First, individuals scoring higher for extraversion showed poorer retrieval accuracy. These individuals additionally manifested lower resting heart rate and lower state anxiety, suggesting that attenuated levels of cardiovascular arousal in extraverts underlies poorer performance. Second, higher extraversion scores predicted higher emotional intensity ratings of fearful faces reinforced at systole. Third, individuals scoring higher for neuroticism showed higher retrieval confidence for fearful faces reinforced at diastole. Our results show that cardiac signals shape feedback processing to influence learning of fearful faces, an effect underpinned by personality differences linked to psychophysiological arousal.

In human computer interactions — especially gaming — the role of empathy has been mooted as a necessary prerequisite for higher levels of engagement and immersion. More recently other forms of engagement, including intellectual/cognitive engagement, have been proposed. In this study we present a carefully controlled dataset of human-computer interactions with a wide range of stimuli that ranged from highly engaging to boring to test these two theories. Analyzing 844 response sets to visual analogue scales (VAS) for empathy, interest, boredom, and engagement, we found that high empathy was sufficient for high engagement but is not necessary, whilst the converse was not true. We also found that empathy and boredom were incompatible with each other, but low levels of either were permissive rather than causal to the other. We conclude that there is no monotonic relationship between increasing empathy and engagement; either empathy is a sufficient (but not necessary) cause of engagement, or engagement is a necessary precursor to high empathy.

Naturalistic environments have been demonstrated to promote relaxation and wellbeing. We assess opposing theoretical accounts for these effects through investigation of autonomic arousal and alterations of activation and functional connectivity within the default mode network (DMN) of the brain while participants listened to sounds from artificial and natural environments. We found no evidence for increased DMN activity in the naturalistic compared to artificial or control condition, however, seed based functional connectivity showed a shift from anterior to posterior midline functional coupling in the naturalistic condition. These changes were accompanied by an increase in peak high frequency heart rate variability, indicating an increase in parasympathetic activity in the naturalistic condition in line with the Stress Recovery Theory of nature exposure. Changes in heart rate and the peak high frequency were correlated with baseline functional connectivity within the DMN and baseline parasympathetic tone respectively, highlighting the importance of individual neural and autonomic differences in the response to nature exposure. Our findings may help explain reported health benefits of exposure to natural environments, through identification of alterations to autonomic activity and functional coupling within the DMN when listening to naturalistic sounds.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterised by the presence of obsessions or compulsions, or commonly of both. OCD is the fourth most common mental disorder after depression, alcohol/substance misuse, and social phobia, with a lifetime prevalence in community surveys of 1.6%.1 The severity of OCD differs markedly from one person to another. People are often able to hide their OCD, even from their own family, although it can cause problems in relationships and interfere with the ability to study or work. Health consequences can also occur: fear of contamination can, for example, prevent the accessing of appropriate health services or lead to dermatitis from excessive washing. When the disorder starts in childhood or adolescence, young people may avoid socialising with peers or become unable to live independently. The World Health Organization ranks OCD as one of the 10 most handicapping conditions by lost income and decreased quality of life.2 This clinical review summarises the evidence on how to recognise, assess, and manage people with OCD.

The dynamic and flexible nature of memories is evident in our ability to adopt multiple visual perspectives. Although autobiographical memories are typically encoded from the visual perspective of our own eyes they can be retrieved from the perspective of an observer looking at our self. Here, we examined the neural mechanisms of shifting visual perspective during long-term memory retrieval and its influence on online and subsequent memories using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants generated specific autobiographical memories from the last five years and rated their visual perspective. In a separate fMRI session, they were asked to retrieve the memories across three repetitions while maintaining the same visual perspective as their initial rating or by shifting to an alternative perspective. Visual perspective shifting during autobiographical memory retrieval was supported by a linear decrease in neural recruitment across repetitions in the posterior parietal cortices. Additional analyses revealed that the precuneus, in particular, contributed to both online and subsequent changes in the phenomenology of memories. Our findings show that flexibly shifting egocentric perspective during autobiographical memory retrieval is supported by the precuneus, and suggest that this manipulation of mental imagery during retrieval has consequences for how memories are retrieved and later remembered.

Feminine physical characteristics in women are positively correlated with markers of their mate quality. Previous research on men’s judgments of women’s facial attractiveness suggests that men show stronger preferences for feminine characteristics in women’s faces when their own testosterone levels are relatively high. Such results could reflect stronger preferences for high quality mates when mating motivation is strong and/or following success in male-male competition. Given these findings, the current study investigated whether a similar effect of testosterone occurs for men’s preferences for feminine characteristics in women’s voices. Men’s preferences for feminized versus masculinized versions of women’s and men’s voices were assessed in five weekly test sessions and saliva samples were collected in each test session. Analyses showed no relationship between men’s voice preferences and their testosterone levels. Men’s tendency to perceive masculinized men’s and women’s voices as more dominant was also unrelated to their testosterone levels. Together, the results of the current study suggest that testosterone-linked changes in responses to sexually dimorphic characteristics previously reported for men's perceptions of faces do not occur for men's perceptions of voices.

Appearance goals for exercise are consistently associated with negative body image, but research has yet to consider the processes that link these two variables. Self-determination theory offers one such process: introjected (guilt-based) regulation of exercise behavior. Study 1 investigated these relationships within a cross-sectional sample of female UK students (n = 215, 17-30 years). Appearance goals were indirectly, negatively associated with body image due to links with introjected regulation. Study 2 experimentally tested this pathway, manipulating guilt relating to exercise and appearance goals independently and assessing post-test guilt and body anxiety (n = 165, 18-27 years). The guilt manipulation significantly increased post-test feelings of guilt, and these increases were associated with increased post-test body anxiety, but only for participants in the guilt condition. The implications of these findings for self-determination theory and the importance of guilt for the body image literature are discussed.

The Lancet Countdown: tracking progress on health and climate change is an international, multidisciplinary research collaboration between academic institutions and practitioners across the world. It follows on from the work of the 2015 Lancet Commission, which concluded that the response to climate change could be “the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century”. The Lancet Countdown aims to track the health impacts of climate hazards; health resilience and adaptation; health co-benefits of climate change mitigation; economics and finance; and political and broader engagement. These focus areas form the five thematic working groups of the Lancet Countdown and represent different aspects of the complex association between health and climate change. These thematic groups will provide indicators for a global overview of health and climate change; national case studies highlighting countries leading the way or going against the trend; and engagement with a range of stakeholders. The Lancet Countdown ultimately aims to report annually on a series of indicators across these five working groups. This paper outlines the potential indicators and indicator domains to be tracked by the collaboration, with suggestions on the methodologies and datasets available to achieve this end. The proposed indicator domains require further refinement, and mark the beginning of an ongoing consultation process—from November, 2016 to early 2017—to develop these domains, identify key areas not currently covered, and change indicators where necessary. This collaboration will actively seek to engage with existing monitoring processes, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and WHO's climate and health country profiles. The indicators will also evolve over time through ongoing collaboration with experts and a range of stakeholders, and be dependent on the emergence of new evidence and knowledge. During the course of its work, the Lancet Countdown will adopt a collaborative and iterative process, which aims to complement existing initiatives, welcome engagement with new partners, and be open to developing new research projects on health and climate change.

Advances in investigative techniques have led to an increasing awareness and understanding of the role of central neural control in the autonomic nervous system regulation of the heart. Substantial evidence exists for a role of the higher centres in neuro-cardiac control including the effect of focal brain stimulation and acute brain lesions on cardiac electrophysiology, blood pressure, contractile function and the development of arrhythmias. Mental stress and strong emotions have long been associatedwith sudden cardiac death. There is an emerging literature relating the gene-environment interactions in determining the neural patterning responsible for the stress response itself. The role of the higher brain centres in determining myocardial behaviour has become accessible
through the utilisation of optogenetic techniques to modulate activity in specific brainstem nuclei, enabling
the dissection of specific vagal and sympathetic inputs on cardiac electrophysiology and arrhythmogenesis. Central cardiac control mechanisms are modulated by afferent signals from the heart. Ascending interoceptive pathways from heart to several forebrain regions influence the behavioural response and autonomic output to the heart. These processes are expressed as control loops at multiple levels of the neuraxis and are assumed to converge in part at the level of the baroreflex to shape the efferent drive to the heart and vasculature.

Interoception refers to the sensing of signals concerning the internal state of the body. Individual differences in interoceptive sensitivity are proposed to account for differences in affective processing, including the expression of anxiety. The majority of investigations of interoceptive accuracy focus on cardiac signals, typically using heartbeat detection tests and self-report measures. Consequently, little is known about how different organ-specific axes of interoception relate to each other or to symptoms of anxiety. Here, we compare interoception for cardiac and respiratory signals. We demonstrate a dissociation between cardiac and respiratory measures of interoceptive accuracy (i.e. task performance), yet a positive relationship between cardiac and respiratory measures of interoceptive awareness (i.e. metacognitive insight into own interoceptive ability). Neither interoceptive accuracy nor metacognitive awareness for cardiac and respiratory measures was related to touch acuity, an exteroceptive sense. Specific measures of interoception were found to be predictive of anxiety symptoms. Poor respiratory accuracy was associated with heightened anxiety score, while good metacognitive awareness for cardiac interoception was associated with reduced anxiety. These findings highlight that detection accuracies across different sensory modalities are dissociable and future work can better delineate their relationship to affective and cognitive constructs.
This article is part of the themed issue ‘Interoception beyond homeostasis: affect, cognition and mental health’.

Interoception refers to the sensing of the internal state of one's body. Interoception is distinct from the processing of sensory information concerning external (non-self) stimuli (e.g. vision, hearing, touch and smell) and is the afferent axis to internal (autonomic and hormonal) physiological control. However, the impact of interoception extends beyond homeostatic/allostatic reflexes: it is proposed to be fundamental to motivation, emotion (affective feelings and behaviours), social cognition and self-awareness. This view is supported by a growing body of experimental evidence that links peripheral physiological states to mental processes. Within this framework, the representation of self is constructed from early development through continuous integrative representation of biological data from the body, to form the basis for those aspects of conscious awareness grounded on the subjective sense of being a unique individual. This theme issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B draws together state-of-the-art knowledge concerning theoretical, experimental and clinical facets of interoception with the emphasis on cognitive and affective neuroscience. The multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspectives represented in this theme issue disseminate and entrench knowledge about interoception across the scientific community and provide a reference for the conceptualization and further study of interoception across behavioural sciences.

Interoception is the sensing of physiological signals originating inside the body, such as hunger, pain and heart rate. People with greater sensitivity to interoceptive signals, as measured by, for example,
tests of heart beat detection, perform better in laboratory studies of risky decision-making. However,
there has been little field work to determine if interoceptive sensitivity contributes to success in realworld, high-stakes risk taking. Here, we report on a study in which we quantified heartbeat detection skills in a group of financial traders working on a London trading floor. We found that traders are better able to perceive their own heartbeats than matched controls from the non-trading population. Moreover, the interoceptive ability of traders predicted their relative profitability, and strikingly, how long they survived in the financial markets. Our results suggest that signals from the body - the gut feelings of financial lore - contribute to success in the markets.

This thesis investigates how identity styles operate in a non-Western cultural context. Through four papers, it both tests and extends some of the theoretical assertions made by the social constructivist approach of identity styles (Berzonsky, 2011), which proposes that people construct both ‘who they think they are’ and ‘the reality in which they live’, through informational, normative or diffuse-avoidant identity orientations. Although the relationship among identity styles and well-being is well established in Western literature, there is a serious dearth of similar research in non-Western cultures such as Pakistan. Western theories tend to assume the universal generalisability of identity styles and their relationship with well-being. The primary aim of this research is to test the validity of this assumption in the cultural context of Pakistan.

Paper 1 systematically examines the factorial structure of the Identity Styles Inventory (ISI-5) in a Pakistani sample. In confirmatory factor analysis, normative orientation items perform relatively poorly, leading to a possibility that the conception of normative orientation is not as universal as previously assumed. Paper 2 shows that well-being is predicted positively by information orientation and negatively by diffuse-avoidant orientation in the Pakistani sample. Normative orientation remained as non-significant predictor of well-being. Identity commitment and satisfaction of identity motives partially mediate these links. Paper 3 explores the indigenous processes of identity formation through qualitative semi-structured interviews. Normative orientation is found to operate at a much more complex level than assumed previously. Participants described many different ways of being normative, making this a less automatic, mindless and effortless process in Pakistani culture than assumed previously based on Western research models. Paper 4 focuses on the construction and psychometric testing of new measures of normative orientation suitable for use with the samples from Pakistan. Together, these studies illustrate the value of using indigenous perspectives to enrich Western-based understandings of identity formation.

The notion that unconscious Bayesian inference underlies perception is gaining
ground. Predictive coding approaches posit that the state of the world is inferred
by integrating, at each level of the perceptual hierarchy, top-down prior beliefs
about sensory causes and bottom-up prediction errors. In this framework,
percepts correspond to a top-down stream of beliefs that best 'explain away'
sensory signals. Although such frameworks are gathering empirical support,
subjective facets of perception remain unexplained from these perspectives.
This thesis combines behavioural, computational and neuroimaging methods to
examine how subjective visual confidence can be accounted for in a predictive
coding framework.
Experiment one shows that, behaviourally, perceptual expectations about target
presence or absence both liberalise confidence thresholds and increase
metacognitive accuracy. These results are modelled in a signal detectiontheoretic
framework as low-level priors shifting the posterior odds of being
correct. Using EEG, experiment two reveals that influence of expectations on
decision and confidence oscillates with the phase of pre-stimulus alpha
oscillations. This means that prior to target onset, both objective and subjective
decisions have been rhythmically biased by the periodic recruitment of
expectations to visual areas. Using fMRI, experiment three shows that in the
post-stimulus period, expectations and sensory signals are integrated into
confidence judgements in right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG). Furthermore, this
process recruits orbitofrontal cortex and bilateral frontal pole, which represent
top-down influences, and occipital lobe, which represents bottom-up signals.
Together, these results suggest that expectations shape subjective confidence
by biasing the posterior probability of the perceptual belief.

Eminent colleagues in research on energy balance and human obesity, including the two Editors of this journal, argue that research participants’ reports of their own food intake and physical activity should be replaced by monitoring instruments that generate data automatically.1 This proposal has two fundamental flaws. Both basic deficiencies in research on human obesity can be overcome by objective verbal data developed in psychological science. The first flaw is that the everyday actions that need to measured are liable to be changed by awareness that they are being monitored. The second basic flaw is that physics and chemistry cannot capture the societally objective patterns in human ingestion and movement. Choices of foods and drinks, as well as exercising or resting, and keeping warm or cool, are all actions construed in words by a community. The identity of each habitual practice is specifiable only by a culture’s consensus on descriptions of the observed activities. Fundamental scientific evidence from life in the locality is needed in order to determine the amount of weight change caused by a persisting change in frequency of a recognised habit.

This study examined the effects of extraversion and neuroticism on participants' reported vividness of visual imagery and on their memory performance for concrete and abstract nouns. Groups of extraverts (n = 15) and introverts (n = 15) were selected from a larger original sample and asked to remember a series of concrete and abstract nouns, including a set of lexically ambiguous concrete homonyms (e.g., earth = 1. planet, 2. soil). Extraverts reported more vivid imagery than introverts but this did not translate into better recall for extraverts, even for concrete stimuli. Recall was best for unambiguous concrete nouns, followed by concrete homonyms, then abstract nouns. While initial analyses suggested that there was an interaction between extraversion and the type of word presented, later analyses revealed that neuroticism was the main driver in differences in recall between different word types. While differences in recall were best explained by context availability theory (Schwanenflugel, 1991) rather than dual coding theory (Paivio, 1991), questions remain about the power of either theory to explain the role of individual differences in personality on recall, particularly given that imagery vividness effects were related to extraversion while differences in recall were related to neuroticism. The implications of these findings for future research and theoretical development are discussed.

People with grapheme-colour synaesthesia perceive enriched experiences of colours in response to graphemes (letters, digits). In this study, we examined whether these synaesthetes show a generic associative memory advantage for stimuli that do not elicit a synaesthetic colour. We used a novel between group design (14 young synaesthetes, 14 young and 14 older adults) with a self-paced visual associative learning paradigm and subsequent retrieval (immediate and delayed). Non-synaesthesia inducing, achromatic fractal pair-associates were manipulated in visual similarity (high and low) and corresponded to high and low memory load conditions. The main finding was a learning and retrieval advantage of synaesthetes relative to older, but not to younger, adults. Furthermore the significance testing was supported with effect size measures and power calculations. Differences between synaesthetes and older adults were found during dissimilar pair (high memory load) learning and retrieval at immediate and delayed stages. Moreover, we found a medium size difference between synaesthetes and young adults for similar pair (low memory load) learning. Differences between young and older adults were also observed during associative learning and retrieval, but were of medium effect size coupled with low power. The results show a subtle associative memory advantage in synaesthetes for non-synaesthesia inducing stimuli, which can be detected against older adults. They also indicate that perceptual mechanisms (enhanced in synaesthesia, declining as part of the aging process) can translate into a generic associative memory advantage, and may contribute to associative deficits associated with healthy aging.

Using the internet or other information communication
technology to acquire information has become common practice. However, reading online changes the way we process and memorise the unbounded information available on the web, compared to reading traditional closed print text. How do we prepare present and future generations for the new and more complex ‘digital literacies’? Are our changing online reading behaviours merely negative for knowledge acquisition, or do they perhaps represent the cognitive mechanisms of the future to successfully deal with information abundance on the internet?

Competitive environments in which individuals compete for mutually-exclusive outcomes require rational decision making in order to maximize gains but often result in poor quality heuristics. Reasons for the greater reliance on lose-shift relative to win-stay behaviour shown in previous studies were explored using the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors and by manipulating the value of winning and losing. Decision-making following a loss was characterized as relatively fast and relatively inflexible both in terms of the failure to modulate the magnitude of lose-shift strategy and the lack of significant neural modulation. In contrast, decision-making following a win was characterized as relatively slow and relatively flexible both in terms of a behavioural increase in the magnitude of win-stay strategy and a neural modulation of feedback-related negativity (FRN) and stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) following outcome value modulation. The win-stay / lose-shift heuristic appears not to be a unified mechanism, with the former relying on System 2 processes and the latter relying on System 1 processes. Our ability to play rationally appears more likely when the outcome is positive and when the value of wins are low, highlighting how vulnerable we can be when trying to succeed during competition.

Objective: In most developed countries substantial disparities exist in access to mental health services for black and minority ethnic (BME) populations. We sought to determine perceived barriers to accessing mental health services among people from these backgrounds to inform the development of effective and culturally acceptable services to improve equity in healthcare.

Design and Setting: Qualitative study in Southeast England.
Participants: Twenty-six adults from BME backgrounds (13 men, 13 women; aged >18 years) were recruited to two focus groups. Participants were identified through the registers of the Black and Minority Ethnic Community Partnership centre and by visits to local community gatherings, and were invited to take part by community development workers. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify key themes about perceived barriers to accessing mental health services.

Results: Participants identified two broad themes that influenced access to mental health services. First, Personal and environmental factors included inability to recognize and accept mental health problems, positive impact of social networks, reluctance to discuss psychological distress and seek help among men, cultural identity, negative perception of and social stigma against mental health, and financial factors. Second, factors affecting the relationship between service user and healthcare provider included the impact of long waiting times for initial assessment, language barriers, poor communication between service users and providers, inadequate recognition or response to mental health needs, imbalance of power and authority between service users and providers, cultural naivety, insensitivity and discrimination towards the needs of BME service users, and lack of awareness of different services among service users and providers.

Conclusions: People from BME backgrounds require considerable mental health literacy and practical support to raise awareness of mental health conditions and combat stigma. There is a need for improving information about services and access pathways. Healthcare providers need relevant training and support in developing effective communication strategies to deliver individually tailored and culturally sensitive care. Improved engagement with people from BME backgrounds in the development and delivery of culturally appropriate mental health services could facilitate better understanding of mental health conditions and improve access.

The representational account of memory envisages perception and memory to be on a continuum rather than in discretely divided brain systems [Bussey, T. J., & Saksida, L. M. Memory, perception, and the ventral visual-perirhinal-hippocampal stream: Thinking outside of the boxes. Hippocampus, 17, 898–908, 2007]. We tested this account using a novel between-group design with young grapheme-color synesthetes, older adults, and young controls. We investigated how the disparate sensory-perceptual abilities between these groups translated into associative memory performance for visual stimuli that do not induce synesthesia. ROI analyses of the entire ventral visual stream showed that associative retrieval (a pair-associate retrieved in the absence of a visual stimulus) yielded enhanced activity in young and older adults' visual regions relative to synesthetes, whereas associative recognition (deciding whether a visual stimulus was the correct pair-associate) was characterized by enhanced activity in synesthetes' visual regions relative to older adults. Whole-brain analyses at associative retrieval revealed an effect of age in early visual cortex, with older adults showing enhanced activity relative to synesthetes and young adults. At associative recognition, the group effect was reversed: Synesthetes showed significantly enhanced activity relative to young and older adults in early visual regions. The inverted group effects observed between retrieval and recognition indicate that reduced sensitivity in visual cortex (as in aging) comes with increased activity during top–down retrieval and decreased activity during bottom–up recognition, whereas enhanced sensitivity (as in synesthesia) shows the opposite pattern. Our results provide novel evidence for the direct contribution of perceptual mechanisms to visual associative memory based on the examples of synesthesia and aging.

Research on cultural transmission among Americans has established a bias for transmitting stories that have disgusting elements (such as exposure to rats and maggots). Conceived of as a cultural evolutionary force, this phenomenon is one type of emotional selection. In a series of online studies with Americans and Indians we investigate whether there are cultural differences in emotional selection, such that the transmission process favours different kinds of content in different countries. The first study found a bias for disgusting content (rats and maggots) among Americans but not among Indians. Four subsequent studies focused on how country interacts with kind of emotional content (disgusting vs. happy surprises and good news) in reactions to transmission of stories or information. Whereas Indian participants, compared to Americans, tended to be less interested in, and excited by, transmission of stories and news involving common disgust-elicitors (like rats), the opposite pattern held for transmission of happy surprises and good news (e.g., the opening of a new public facility). We discuss various possible explanations and implications.

When visual input has conflicting interpretations, conscious perception can alternate spontaneously between these possible interpretations. This is called bistable perception. Previous neuroimaging studies have indicated the involvement of two right parietal areas in resolving perceptual ambiguity (ant-SPLr and post-SPLr). Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies that selectively interfered with the normal function of these regions suggest that they play opposing roles in this type of perceptual switch. In the present study, we investigated this fractionation of parietal function by use of combined TMS with electroencephalography (EEG). Specifically, while participants viewed either a bistable stimulus, a replay stimulus, or resting-state fixation, we applied single pulse TMS to either location independently while simultaneously recording EEG. Combined with participant’s individual structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, this dataset allows for complex analyses of the effect of TMS on neural time series data, which may further elucidate the causal role of the parietal cortex in ambiguous perception.

This paper presents a taxonomy of 19 cognitive criteria for judging what constitutes effective representational systems, particularly for knowledge rich topics. Two classes of cognitive criteria are discussed. The first concerns access to concepts by reading and making inferences from external representations. The second class addresses the generation and manipulation of external representations to fulfill reasoning or problem solving goals. Suggestions for the use of the classification are made. Examples of conventional representations and Law Encoding Diagrams for the conceptual challenging topic of particle collisions are provided throughout.

Intentional forgetting benefits memory by removing no longer needed information and promoting processing of more relevant materials. This study sought to understand how the behavioural and neurophysiological representation of intentional forgetting would be impacted by emotion. We took a novel approach by examining the unique contribution of both valence and arousal on emotional directed forgetting. Participants completed an item directed forgetting task for positive, negative, and neutral words at high and lower levels of arousal while brain activity was recorded using electroencephalography (EEG). Behaviourally, recognition of to-be-remembered (TBR) and to-be-forgotten (TBF) items varied as a function of valence and arousal with reduced directed forgetting for high arousing negative and neutral words. In the brain, patterns of frontal and posterior activation in response to TBF and TBR cues respectively replicated prior EEG evidence to support involvement of inhibitory and selective rehearsal mechanisms in item directed forgetting. Interestingly, emotion only impacted cue-related posterior activity, which varied depending on specific interactions between valence and arousal. Together, results suggest that the brain handles valence and arousal differently and highlights the importance of considering in a collective manner the multidimensional nature of emotion in experimentation.

Group Person-Based Cognitive Therapy (PBCT) integrates cognitive therapy and mindfulness to target distinct sources of distress in psychosis. The present study presents data from the first randomised controlled trial inves- tigating group PBCT in people distressed by hearing voices. One-hundred and eight participants were randomised to receive either group PBCT and Treatment As Usual (TAU) or TAU only. While there was no significant effect on the primary outcome, a measure of general psychological distress, results showed significant between-group post-intervention benefits in voice-related distress, perceived controllability of voices and recovery. Participants in the PBCT group reported significantly lower post-treatment levels of depression, with this effect maintained at six-month follow-up. Findings suggest PBCT delivered over 12 weeks effectively impacts key dimensions of the voice hearing experience, supports meaningful behaviour change, and has lasting effects on mood.

The environment has a temporal structure, and knowing when a stimulus will appear translates into increased perceptual performance. Here we investigated how the human brain exploits temporal regularity in stimulus sequences for perception. We find that the timing of stimuli that occasionally deviate from a regularly paced sequence is perceptually distorted. Stimuli presented earlier than expected are perceptually delayed, whereas stimuli presented on time and later than expected are perceptually accelerated. This result suggests that the brain regularizes slightly deviant stimuli with an asymmetry that leads to the perceptual acceleration of expected stimuli. We present a Bayesian model for the combination of dynamically-updated expectations, in the form of a priori probability of encountering future stimuli, with incoming sensory information. The asymmetries in the results are accounted for by the asymmetries in the distributions involved in the computational process.

People with sequence-space synaesthesia (SSS) report stable visuo-spatial forms corresponding to numbers, days and months (amongst others). This type of synaesthesia has intrigued scientists for over 130 years but the lack of an agreed upon tool for assessing it has held back research on this phenomenon. The present study builds on previous tests by measuring the consistency of spatial locations that is known to discriminate controls from synaesthetes. We document, for the first time, the sensitivity and specificity of such a test and suggest a diagnostic cut-off point for discriminating between the groups based on the area bounded by different placement attempts with the same item.

This study considers how inter-individual differences in visual ability are structured. Visual ability could be a single entity (along the lines of general intelligence, or ‘g’), or could be structured according to major anatomical or physiological pathways (dorsal v. ventral streams; magno- v. parvo-cellular systems); or may be a finer-grained mosaic of abilities. To test this, we employed seven visual psychophysical tests (generating 16 measures) on a large (100+) sample of neurotypical participants. A Varimax-rotated PCA (Principal Component Analysis) revealed a two-factor solution that broadly corresponds to a high and low spatial frequency division (consistent with a magno/parvo distinction). Over and above this, two measures (temporal order judgments; gain in contrast sensitivity) correlated with most others, and loaded on both factors, suggesting that they tap broad visual processing demands. These analyses open up further possibilities for exploring the genetic and neuroscientific foundations of differences in visual ability. The tests were also run on a group of individuals with different types of visually-based synaesthesia, given that previous research have suggested they possess a distinct profile of visual abilities. Synaesthesia was linked to enhanced processing of colour and shape/curvature information (amongst others), that may relate to differences in V4 in this group. In conclusion, individual differences in vision are both striking and meaningful, despite our difficulty to imagine seeing the world any differently.

Synaesthesia is an unusual perceptual experience in which an inducer stimulus triggers a percept in a different domain in addition to its own. To explore the conditions under which synaesthesia evolves, we studied a neuronal network model that represents two recurrently connected neural systems. The interactions in the network evolve according to learning rules that optimize sensory sensitivity. We demonstrate several scenarios, such as sensory deprivation or heightened plasticity, under which synaesthesia can evolve even though the inputs to the two systems are statistically independent and the initial cross-talk interactions are zero. Sensory deprivation is the known causal mechanism for acquired synaesthesia and increased plasticity is implicated in developmental synaesthesia. The model unifies different causes of synaesthesia within a single theoretical framework and repositions synaesthesia not as some quirk of aberrant connectivity, but rather as a functional brain state that can emerge as a consequence of optimising sensory information processing.

Parkinson’s disease impairs the inhibition of responses, and whilst impulsivity is mild for some patients, severe impulse control disorders affect approximately ten percent of cases. Based on preclinical models we proposed that noradrenergic denervation contributes to the impairment of response inhibition, via changes in the prefrontal cortex and its subcortical connections. Previous work in Parkinson’s disease found that the selective noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor atomoxetine could improve response inhibition, gambling decisions and reflection impulsivity. Here we tested the hypotheses that atomoxetine can restore functional brain networks for response inhibition in Parkinson’s disease, and that both structural and functional connectivity determine the behavioral effect. In a randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled crossover study, nineteen patients with mild to moderate idiopathic Parkinson’s disease underwent functional MRI during a stop signal task, while on their usual dopaminergic therapy. Patients received 40mg atomoxetine or placebo, orally. This regimen anticipates that noradrenergic therapies for behavioral symptoms would be adjunctive to, not a replacement for, dopaminergic therapy. Twenty matched control participants provided normative data. Arterial spin labelling identified no significant changes in regional perfusion. We assessed functional interactions between key frontal and subcortical brain areas for response inhibition, by comparing twenty Dynamic Causal Models of the response inhibition network, inverted to the functional-MRI data and compared using Random Effects model selection. We found that the normal interaction between pre-supplementary motor cortex and the inferior frontal gyrus was absent in Parkinson’s disease patients on placebo (despite dopaminergic therapy), but this connection was restored by atomoxetine. The behavioral change in response inhibition (improvement indicated by reduced stop-signal reaction time) following atomoxetine correlated with structural connectivity as measured by the fractional anisotropy in the white matter underlying the inferior frontal gyrus. Using multiple regression models, we examined the factors that influenced the individual differences in the response to atomoxetine: the reduction in stop-signal reaction time correlated with structural connectivity and baseline performance, whilst disease severity and drug plasma level predicted the change in fronto-striatal effective connectivity following atomoxetine. These results suggest that (i) atomoxetine increases sensitivity of the inferior frontal gyrus to afferent inputs from the pre-supplementary motor cortex, (ii) atomoxetine can enhance downstream modulation of frontal-subcortical connections for response inhibition; and (iii) the behavioural consequences of treatment are dependent on frontostriatal structural connections. The individual differences in behavioral responses to atomoxetine highlight the need for patient stratification in future clinical trials of noradrenergic therapies for Parkinson’s disease.

Analyzing chunk pauses to measure mathematical competence: Copying equations using ‘centre-click’ interaction.Mathematical competence can be evaluated by analyzing pauses between strokes that occurring whilst an individual copies equations. These pauses provide a temporal signal that reflects the cognitive effort to process chunks. ‘Centre-click’ interaction with a mouse and response grid on a computer display is introduced as new technique for measuring the temporal chunk signal. Alternative pause measures and forms of normalization are explored. It is shown that centre-click copying can be used to measure mathematical competence.

The study investigated the effects of chunking and perceptual pat- terns that guide the drawings of Rey complex figure. Ten adult participants (M age = 22.2 yr., SD = 4.1) reproduced a single stimulus in four drawing modes includ- ing delayed recall, tracing, copying, and immediate recall across 10 sessions pro- ducing a total of 400 trials. It was hypothesized that the effect of chunking is most obvious in the free recall tasks than in the tracing or copying tasks. Measures such as pauses, patterns of drawings, and transitions among patterns of drawings sug- gested that participants used chunking to aid rapid learning of the diagram. The analysis of the participants' sequence of chunk production further revealed that they used a spatial schema to organize the chunks. Findings from this study pro- vide additional evidence to support prior studies that claim graphical information is hierarchically organized.

Purpose: Postnatal depression (PND) affects 10-15% of new mothers, and approximately 90% of cases are managed in primary care. Antidepressants are effective but adherence is poor, therefore psychological interventions must be investigated. This systematic review assessed the efficacy of psychological treatments for PND in primary care.

Methods: A systematic search was undertaken to identify articles published in English between 2000 and 2014, which met eligibility criteria: 1) RCTs; 2) assessing psychological interventions for PND against any other treatment or wait-list control; 3) recruitment in primary care; 4) participants with diagnosed depressive episode or score on Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale ≥12 or Beck Depression Inventory ≥10 at baseline, and a child <12 months. Quality was assessed using an adapted CCDAN quality rating scale and meta-analysis was carried out using RevMan 5.3.

Results: After examining 5919 papers, 10 studies met inclusion criteria, reporting 14 psychological intervention arms: 7 cognitive behavioral therapy, 2 interpersonal therapy, 2 counselling and 3 other interventions. Psychological interventions resulted in lower depressive symptomatology than control (standardized mean difference (SMD) -0.38 (95% CI -0.49, -0.27)) directly following treatment, and after 6 months follow up (SMD -0.21 (-0.37, -0.05)). No significant differences were found between different types of therapy. Improvements were also found in adjustment to parenthood, marital relationship, social support, stress and anxiety in the intervention arms compared to control.

Conclusions: Psychological interventions deliverable in the primary care setting are linked to significant improvement in depressive symptomatology both immediately and for up to six months of follow up.

Objectives: Anxiety is a common condition usually managed in general practice (GP) in the UK. GP patient records can be used for epidemiological studies of anxiety as well as clinical audit and service planning. However it is not clear how General Practitioners (GPs) conceptualise, diagnose and document anxiety in these records. We sought to understand these factors through an interview study with GPs.
Setting: United Kingdom (UK) NHS General Practice (England and Wales)
Participants: 17 UK GPs
Primary and Secondary Outcome Measures: Semi-structured interviews used vignettes to explore the process of diagnosing anxiety in primary care and investigate influences on recording. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis.
Results: GPs chose 12 different codes for recording anxiety in the two vignettes, and reported that history, symptoms and management would be recorded in free text. GPs reported on four themes representing influences on recording of anxiety: “anxiety or a normal response”, “granularity of diagnosis”, “giving patients a label”, and “time as a tool”; and three themes about recording in general: “justifying the choice of code”, “usefulness of coding” and “practice specific pressures”. GPs reported using only a regular selection of codes in patient records to help standardise records within the practice and as a time saving measure.
Conclusions: We have identified a coding culture where GPs feel confident recognising anxiety symptoms, however due to clinical uncertainty, a long term perspective and a focus on management they are reluctant to code firm diagnoses in the initial stages. Researchers using GP patient records should be aware that GPs may prefer free text, symptom codes and other general codes rather than firm diagnostic codes for anxiety.

Computer simulations are increasingly used to monitor and predict behavior at large crowd events, such as mass gatherings, festivals and evacuations. We critically examine the crowd modeling literature and call for future simulations of crowd behavior to be based more closely on findings from current social psychological research. A systematic review was conducted on the crowd modeling literature (N = 140 articles) to identify the assumptions about crowd behavior that modelers use in their simulations. Articles were coded according to the way in which crowd structure was modeled. It was found that 2 broad types are used: mass approaches and small group approaches. However, neither the mass nor the small group approaches can accurately simulate the large collective behavior that has been found in extensive empirical research on crowd events. We argue that to model crowd behavior realistically, simulations must use methods which allow crowd members to identify with each other, as suggested by self-categorization theory.

Rock, Paper, Scissors (RPS) represents a unique gaming space in which the predictions of human
rational decision-making can be compared with actual performance. Playing a computerized opponent
adopting a mixed-strategy equilibrium, participants revealed a non-significant tendency to over-select
Rock. Further violations of rational decision-making were observed using an inter-trial analysis where
participants were more likely to switch their item selection at trial n + 1 following a loss or draw at
trial n, revealing the strategic vulnerability of individuals following the experience of negative rather
than positive outcome. Unique switch strategies related to each of these trial n outcomes were also
identified: after losing participants were more likely to ‘downgrade’ their item (e.g., Rock followed by
Scissors) but after drawing participants were more likely to ‘upgrade’ their item (e.g., Rock followed by
Paper). Further repetition analysis revealed that participants were more likely to continue their specific
cyclic item change strategy into trial n + 2. The data reveal the strategic vulnerability of individuals
following the experience of negative rather than positive outcome, the tensions between behavioural
and cognitive influences on decision making, and underline the dangers of increased behavioural
predictability in other recursive, non-cooperative environments such as economics and politics.

Visual distractor processing tends to be more pronounced when the perceptual load (PL) of a task is low compared to when it is high [perpetual load theory (PLT); Lavie in J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 21(3):451–468, 1995]. While PLT is well established in the visual domain, application to cross-modal processing has produced mixed results, and the current study was designed in an attempt to improve previous methodologies. First, we assessed PLT using response competition, a typical metric from the uni-modal domain. Second, we looked at the impact of auditory load on visual distractors, and of visual load on auditory distractors, within the same individual. Third, we compared individual uni- and cross-modal selective attention abilities, by correlating performance with the visual Attentional Network Test (ANT). Fourth, we obtained a measure of the relative processing efficiency between vision and audition, to investigate whether processing ease influences the extent of distractor processing. Although distractor processing was evident during both attend auditory and attend visual conditions, we found that PL did not modulate processing of either visual or auditory distractors. We also found support for a correlation between the uni-modal (visual) ANT and our cross-modal task but only when the distractors were visual. Finally, although auditory processing was more impacted by visual distractors, our measure of processing efficiency only accounted for this asymmetry in the auditory high-load condition. The results are discussed with respect to the continued debate regarding the shared or separate nature of processing resources across modalities.

The Attention Network Test (ANT) is widely used to capture group and individual differences in selective attention. Prior behavioral studies with younger and older adults have yielded mixed findings with respect to age differences in three putative attention networks (alerting, orienting, and executive control). To overcome the limitations of behavioral data, the current study combined behavioral and electrophysiological measures. Twenty-four healthy younger adults (aged 18–29 years) and 24 healthy older adults (aged 60–76 years) completed the ANT while EEG data were recorded. Behaviorally, older adults showed reduced alerting, but did not differ from younger adults in orienting or executive control. Electrophysiological components related to alerting and orienting (P1, N1, and CNV) were similar in both age groups, whereas components related to executive control (N2 and P3) showed age-related differences. Together these results suggest that comparisons of network effects between age groups using behavioral data alone may not offer a complete picture of age differences in selective attention, especially for alerting and executive control networks.

Trial schematics are ubiquitous within psychology journals articles and have the potential to inform how we think about time in space from a non-linguistic point of view. Graphical representations of trial schematics were used to compare the spatial representations of time used by the scientific community with the dominant spatial stereotypes for temporal events reported by the scientific community. From 294 observations, approximately 81% of trial schematics contained left-to-right and / or top-to-bottom representations of first-to-last events, consistent with the dominant Western spatial expressions of time. An initially counter-intuitive left-to-right but bottom-to-top spatial stereotype used in approximately 18% of schematics is discussed with respect to its potential perceptual origins. The complications that arise from the use of multiple spatial axes in the representation of time are highlighted and given the tendency for trial schematics to be informationally poor, alternative routes for the supply of thorough experimental detail are suggested.

Background. Despite the high prevalence of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and its negative impact on society, its neurobiology remains obscure. This study characterizes the neurostructural abnormalities associated with key symptoms of GAD, focusing on indicators of impaired emotion regulation (excessive worry, poor concentration, low mindfulness, and physiological arousal). Methods. These domains were assessed in 19 (16 women) GAD patients and 19 healthy controls matched for age and gender, using questionnaires and a low demand behavioral task performed before and after an induction of perseverative cognition (i.e. worry and rumination). Continuous pulse oximetry was used to measure autonomic physiology (heart rate variability; HRV). Observed cognitive and physiological changes in response to the induction provided quantifiable data on emotional regulatory capacity. Participants underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging; voxel-based morphometry was used to quantify the relationship between gray matter volume and psychological and physiological measures. Results. Overall, GAD patients had lower gray matter volume than controls within supramarginal, precentral, and postcentral gyrus bilaterally. Across the GAD group, increased right amygdala volume was associated with prolonged reaction times on the tracking task (indicating increased attentional impairment following the induction) and lower scores on the ‘Act with awareness’ subscale of the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire. Moreover in GAD, medial frontal cortical gray matter volume correlated positively with the ‘Non-react mindfulness’ facet. Lastly, smaller volumes of bilateral insula, bilateral opercular cortex, right supramarginal and precentral gyri, anterior cingulate and paracingulate cortex predicted the magnitude of autonomic change following the induction (i.e. a greater decrease in HRV). Conclusions. Results distinguish neural structures associated with impaired capacity for cognitive, attentional and physiological disengagement from worry, suggesting that aberrant competition between these levels of emotional regulation is intrinsic to symptom expression in GAD.

It is well-established that active rehearsal increases the efficacy of memory consolidation. It is also known that complex events are interpreted with reference to prior knowledge. However, comparatively little attention has been given to the neural underpinnings of these effects. In healthy adult humans, we investigated the impact of effortful, active rehearsal on memory for events by showing people several short video clips and then asking them to recall these clips, either aloud (Experiment 1) or silently while in an MRI scanner (Experiment 2). In both experiments, actively rehearsed clips were remembered in far greater detail than unrehearsed clips when tested a week later. In Experiment 1, highly similar descriptions of events were produced across retrieval trials, suggesting a degree of semanticization of the memories had taken place. In Experiment 2, spatial patterns of BOLD signal in medial temporal and posterior midline regions were correlated when encoding and rehearsing the same video. Moreover, the strength of this correlation in the posterior cingulate predicted the amount of information subsequently recalled. This is likely to reflect a strengthening of the representation of the video's content. We argue that these representations combine both new episodic information and stored semantic knowledge (or "schemas"). We therefore suggest that posterior midline structures aid consolidation by reinstating and strengthening the associations between episodic details and more generic schematic information. This leads to the creation of coherent memory representations of lifelike, complex events that are resistant to forgetting, but somewhat inflexible and semantic-like in nature.

This paper explores whether the increased vulnerability
of children of anxious parents to develop anxiety disorders may be partially explained by these children having increased cognitive biases towards threat compared with children of non-anxious parents. Parents completed questionnaires about their child’s anxiety symptoms. Children aged 5–9 (n = 85) participated in two cognitive bias tasks: 1) an emotion recognition task, and 2) an ambiguous situations questionnaire. For the emotion recognition task, there were no significant differences between at-risk children and children of non-anxious parents in their cognitive bias scores for reaction times or for accuracy in identifying angry or happy facial expressions. In addition, there were no significant differences between at-risk children and children of non-anxious parents in the number of threat interpretations made for the ambiguous situations questionnaire. It is possible that these cognitive biases only become present subsequent to the development of an anxiety disorder, or only in older at-risk children.

Background: Recent evidence suggests that products believed to be healthy may be over-consumed relative to believed indulgent or highly caloric products. The extent to which these effects relate to expectations from labelling, oral experience or assimilation of expectations is unclear. Over two experiments, we tested the hypotheses that healthy and indulgent information could be assimilated by oral experience of beverages and influence sensory evaluation, expected satiety, satiation and subsequent appetite. Additionally, we explored how expectation-experience congruency influenced these factors.
Results: Results supported some assimilation of healthiness and indulgent ratings—study 1 showed that indulgent ratings enhanced by the indulgent label persisted post-tasting, and this resulted in increased fullness ratings.
In study 2, congruency of healthy labels and oral experience promoted enhanced healthiness ratings. These healthiness and indulgent beliefs did not influence sensory analysis or intake—these were dictated by the products themselves. Healthy labels, but not experience, were associated with decreased expected satiety.
Conclusions: Overall labels generated expectations, and some assimilation where there were congruencies between expectation and experience, but oral experience tended to override initial expectations to determine ultimate sensory evaluations and intake. Familiarity with the sensory properties of the test beverages may have resulted in the use of prior knowledge, rather than the label information, to guide evaluations and behaviour.

Data collected over the last decade has begun to implicate behavioural impulsivity in overeating behaviour. How- ever, recent work has suggested that the reinforcing value of food may be associated with impulsive choice (a sub-type of impulsivity), but to date no study has examined how the reinforcing value of food relates to other as- pects of impulsivity. To examine these inter-relationships, 80 women completed measures of eating (a snack in- take test and the Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire and then in a separate test session an inhibitory control task, a delay discounting task, a reflection impulsivity task, and a measure of the reinforcing value of their chosen snack foods. Participants also completed the Behavioural Inhibition System/Behavioural Activation System (BIS/BAS) questionnaire to examine self-report and behavioural parallels between measures. In regression models, only Be- havioural Inhibition System subscales of the BIS/BAS predicted increased responding on the reinforcing value of food task. The reinforcing value of food task predicted and trended to predict calorie and grams intake of snack foods in regression models, supporting RRV as a predictive measure of short-term snack intake. Likewise, impul- sive choice and inhibitory control was not related to eating measures. Methodological implications are discussed.

The expected impact of a food or drink on appetite can influence decisions around eating and the actual experience of satiation and satiety post-consumption. This study explored the relationship between a product’s anticipated sensory characteristics and its expected impact on feelings of hunger, fullness and thirst. Female participants (n = 118) evaluated 40 widely available food and beverage products (vary- ing in physical characteristics, packaging, serving size and total energy content) for anticipated sensory characteristics, pleasantness and familiarity, alongside expected impact on immediate fullness, hunger after one hour and thirst both immediately and after one hour. Correlations revealed that the most caloric products and those anticipated to be creamier were expected to be more filling and hunger suppressing than the products with lower energy content and expected to be less creamy. Total energy was the best predictor of expected satiation and satiety. We observed that beverage products were expected to be similarly satiating as food products (including liquid, solid and semi-solids) with a similar total energy con- tent and expected creaminess. On the other hand, products expected to be less salty and thick were expected to be most thirst-quenching, and these tended to be beverage products, regardless of their total energy content. These results are in line with emerging evidence suggesting that certain sensory cues associated with nutrients can be used to estimate the satiating power of other foods, including beverages. Beverages are expected to be uniquely thirst-quenching, but are not always expected to have a low satiety-value.

Failures to focus attention will affect any task engagement (e.g., at work, in the classroom, when driving). At the clinical end, distractibility is a diagnostic criterion of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In this study, we examined whether the inability to maintain attentional focus varies in the overall population in the form of an attention-distractibility trait. To test this idea, we administered an ADHD diagnostic tool to a sample of healthy participants and assessed the relationship between ADHD symptoms and task distraction. ADHD symptom summary scores were significantly positively associated with distractor interference in letter-search and name-classification tasks (as measured by reaction time), as long as the distractors were irrelevant (cartoon images) rather than relevant (i.e., compatible or incompatible with target names). Higher perceptual load during a task eliminated distraction irrespective of ADHD score. These findings suggest the existence of an attention-distractibility trait that confers vulnerability to irrelevant distraction, which can be remedied by increasing the level of perceptual load during the task.

Mental-Imagery based Brain-Computer Interfaces (MI-BCIs) allow their users to send commands
to a computer using their brain-activity alone (typically measured by ElectroEncephaloGraphy—
EEG), which is processed while they perform specific mental tasks. While very
promising, MI-BCIs remain barely used outside laboratories because of the difficulty
encountered by users to control them. Indeed, although some users obtain good control
performances after training, a substantial proportion remains unable to reliably control an
MI-BCI. This huge variability in user-performance led the community to look for predictors of
MI-BCI control ability. However, these predictors were only explored for motor-imagery
based BCIs, and mostly for a single training session per subject. In this study, 18 participants
were instructed to learn to control an EEG-based MI-BCI by performing 3 MI-tasks, 2
of which were non-motor tasks, across 6 training sessions, on 6 different days. Relationships
between the participants’ BCI control performances and their personality, cognitive
profile and neurophysiological markers were explored. While no relevant relationships with
neurophysiological markers were found, strong correlations between MI-BCI performances
and mental-rotation scores (reflecting spatial abilities) were revealed. Also, a predictive
model of MI-BCI performance based on psychometric questionnaire scores was proposed.
A leave-one-subject-out cross validation process revealed the stability and reliability of this
model: it enabled to predict participants’ performance with a mean error of less than 3
points. This study determined how users’ profiles impact their MI-BCI control ability and
thus clears the way for designing novel MI-BCI training protocols, adapted to the profile of
each user.

Diurnal preference is an individual’s preference for daily activities and sleep timing and is strongly correlated with the underlying circadian clock and the sleep-wake cycle validating its use as an indirect circadian measure in humans. Recent research has implicated DNA methylation as a mechanism involved in the regulation of the circadian clock system in humans and other mammals. In order to evaluate the extent of epigenetic differences associated with diurnal preference, we examined genome-wide patterns of DNA methylation in DNA from monozygotic (MZ) twin-pairs discordant for diurnal preference. MZ twins were selected from a longitudinal twin study designed to investigate the interplay of genetic and environmental factors in the development of emotional and behavioral difficulties. Fifteen pairs of MZ twins were iden- tified in which one member scored considerably higher on the Horne–Ostberg Morningness–Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ) than the other. Genome-wide DNA methylation patterns were assessed in twins’ buccal cell DNA using the Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChips. Quality control and data pre-processing was undertaken using the wateRmelon package. Differentially methylated probes (DMPs) were identified using an analysis strategy taking into account both the significance and the magnitude of DNA methylation differences. Our data indicate that DNA methylation differences are detectable in MZ twins discordant for diurnal preference. Moreover, downstream gene ontology (GO) enrichment analysis on the top-ranked diurnal preference associated DMPs revealed significant enrichment of pathways that have been previously associated with circadian rhythm regulation, including cell adhesion processes and calcium ion binding.

In online businesses, each product item has its specific product page where online consumers can adopt different online product planning and layout tools (OPPLTs) to select their most suitable product items. The product page is usually the first page that online shopping agents are directed to. As a result, a product page plays an important role in the success of online businesses. In this research, the impact of online consumers’ perceptions about the usefulness of different OPPLTs on consumers’ intention towards online apparel shopping is analyzed. The purpose is to obtain knowledge about the effectiveness of each OPPLT in influencing online consumers’ shopping intentions. The results can provide guidance for online businesses so that their product pages can be designed effectively.

To determine whether habitual physical activity status specifically influences executive function change in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) over 1 year. In this longitudinal cohort study, 45 participants with AD were recruited and provided follow-up data approximately 1 year later. Executive function measures (map search task, digit symbol substitution task, controlled oral word association task, verbal fluency task) and habitual physical activity measures (Physical Activity Scale for the Elderly (PASE) and handgrip strength) were taken at baseline and follow-up. Individual composites were subsequently created. Additional demographic, lifestyle, and neuropsychiatric measures were also taken. In a structural equation model (χ2(26) = 9.84, p = .998, comparative fit index = 1.00, root mean square error of approximation = .00), a significant association was found between habitual physical activity and executive function change (β = .27, p = .04). In a cross-lagged panel analysis, a significant path was found between the PASE score and executive change (β = .22, p = .01). As higher habitual physical activity levels were associated with reduced executive function change, the promotion of low-intensity habitual physical activities in individuals with a diagnosis of AD may be warranted. Further research is needed, however, to explore the impact of habitual physical activity on the trajectory of change across cognitive domains, and how this relates to the progression of the underlying pathology associated with this disease.

Purpose: This paper raises important questions from the different perspectives on autism research that arose from a seminar on autism and technology, held as part of an ESRC-funded series on innovative technologies for autism.
Design/methodology/approach: The paper focuses on the roles of technology in understanding questions about different perspectives on autism: how do people on the spectrum see neurotypicals (people without autism) and vice versa?; how do we use eye-gaze differently from each other?; how might technology influence what is looked at and how we measure this?; what differences might there be in how people use imitation of others?; and finally, how should we study and treat any differences?
Findings: We synthesise common themes from invited talks and responses. The audience discussions highlighted the ways in which we take account of human variation, how we can understand the perspective of another, particularly across third-person and second-person approaches in research, and how researchers and stakeholders engage with each other.
Originality/value: We argue that the question of perspectives is important for considering how people with autism and neurotypical people interact in everyday contexts, and how researchers frame their research questions and methods. We propose that stakeholders and researchers can fruitfully engage directly in discussions of research, in ways that benefit both research and practice.

Attentional control theory (ACT) proposes that anxiety is associated with executive functioning deficits. The theory has been widely investigated in adults. The current study tested whether symptoms of childhood anxiety and depression were associated with experimentally measured attentional control in the context of non-emotional and emotional stimuli. Sixty-one children (mean age = 9.23 years, range = 8.39 - 10.41) reported their trait anxiety and depression symptoms and completed three visual search tasks. The tasks used a variant of an irrelevant singleton paradigm and measured attentional capture by task-irrelevant non-emotional (color) and emotional (facial expressions) distractors. Significant attentional capture by both non-emotional and emotional distractors was observed, and was significantly correlated with trait anxiety and symptoms of depression. The strength of relationship between attentional capture and the symptoms did not differ significantly for non-emotional and emotional distractors. The results suggest that symptoms of childhood anxiety and depression are associated with poorer attentional control both in the presence of emotional and non-emotional stimuli, supporting ACT in younger populations. This attentional deficit in the context of non-emotional information might be as central to childhood internalizing symptoms as attentional biases often observed on tasks investigating processing of emotional stimuli.

Marionette is a haptic device designed to explore touch perception limits between real and device induced shapes. Its novelty resides in the support for 2D exploration over a flat surface and multi-finger capabilities. Marionette is able to apply inclination to four fingers with two degrees of freedom while the user moves the device as if it were a mouse. The device is aimed at enabling a new set of haptic user studies. Preliminary results suggest that the limit of curvature perception in 2D curves is mainly determined by the inclination information while touching with both one and four fingers. Additionally, Marionette supports haptic images such as maps, time changing functions and haptically enhanced telepresence.

A mechanism that controls dietary intake may facilitate or inhibit the individual’s ingestion of one or more solid or liquid materials at a particular moment in time.
Appetite for food and drink is the momentary net facilitation of the disposition to ingest.
Some appetite-reducing (i.e. inhibitory) signals arise from transient effects of recent ingestion: the resulting disposition not to eat or drink is called satiety. That being the topic of the inaugural Symposium of the Nutrition and Behaviour Group of the Nutrition Society that the present review concludes, I shall concentrate on moderation of energy intake. Nevertheless, the facilitation of ingestion is considered when directly related to satiety signals.

Background: Maternal depression and unhealthy diet are well-known risk factors for adverse child emotional–behavioural outcomes, but their developmental relationships during the prenatal and postnatal periods are largely uncharted. This study sought to examine the inter-relationships between maternal depression symptoms and unhealthy diet (assessed during pregnancy and postnatal periods) in relation to child emotional–behavioural dysregulation (assessed at the ages of 2, 4 and 7 years).

Method: In a large prospective birth cohort of 7814 mother–child pairs, path analysis was used to examine the independent and inter-related associations of maternal depression symptoms and unhealthy diet with child dysregulation.

Results: Higher prenatal maternal depression symptoms were prospectively associated with higher unhealthy diet, both during pregnancy and the postnatal period, which, in turn, was associated with higher child dysregulation up to the age of 7 years. In addition, during pregnancy, higher maternal depression symptoms and unhealthy diet were each independently associated with higher child dysregulation up to the age of 7 years. These results were robust to other prenatal, perinatal and postnatal confounders (such as parity and birth complications, poverty, maternal education, etc.).

Conclusions: Maternal depression symptoms and unhealthy diet show important developmental associations, but are also independent risk factors for abnormal child development.

Past research has identified maternal depression and family of origin maltreatment as precursors to adolescent depression and antisocial behavior. Caregiving experiences have been identified as a factor that may ameliorate or accentuate adolescent psychopathology trajectories. Using a multilevel approach that pools the unique attributes of two geographically diverse, yet complementary, longitudinal research designs, the present study examined the role of maternal caregiver involvement as a factor that promotes resilience-based trajectories related to depressive symptoms and antisocial behaviors among adolescent girls. The first sample comprises a group of US-based adolescent girls in foster care (n = 100; mean age = 11.50 years), each of whom had a history of childhood maltreatment and removal from their biological parent(s). The second sample comprises a group of UK-based adolescent girls at high familial risk for depression (n = 145; mean age = 11.70 years), with all girls having biological mothers who experienced recurrent depression. Analyses examined the role of maternal caregiving on girls' trajectories of depression and antisocial behavior, while controlling for levels of co-occurring psychopathology at each time point. Results suggest increasing levels of depressive symptoms for girls at familial risk for depression but decreasing levels of depression for girls in foster care. Foster girls' antisocial behavior also decreased over time. Maternal caregiver involvement was differentially related to intercept and slope parameters in both samples. Results are discussed with respect to the benefits of applying multilevel (multisample, multiple outcome) approaches to identifying family-level factors that can reduce negative developmental outcomes in high-risk youth.

BACKGROUND:

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common consequence of interferon alpha (IFNα) treatment and important supporting evidence of a role of inflammation in the aetiology of depression.

OBJECTIVE:

This study aimed to expand the knowledge of baseline clinical vulnerability characteristics to IFNα induced MDD, particularly exploring sub-threshold depressive symptoms.

METHODS:

A prospective cohort of chronic HCV patients undergoing treatment with pegylated-IFNα and ribavirin was studied. MDD was assessed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID-I). Depressive symptoms and severity were assessed at baseline and monthly with the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD). Subjects with MDD or taking antidepressant treatment at baseline were excluded.

RESULTS:

278 patients were assessed for this cohort with a final study sample of 190. 94.2% had contracted HCV through intravenous drug use. During six months IFNα treatment, 53.2% of patients transitioned to DSM-IV threshold MDD. In the multivariate logistic analysis, independent factors significantly associated with development of MDD were younger age (OR 0.96, 95% CI 0.93-1.00, p=0.028), past history of MDD (OR 3.82, 95% CI 1.63-8.92, p=0.002), baseline HAMD items psychomotor retardation (OR 15.21, 95% CI 1.33-173.41, p=0.032) and somatic symptoms (general) (OR 2.96, 95% CI 1.44-6.08, p=0.003), and HCV genotype 2 (OR 2.27, 95% CI 1.07-4.78, p=0.032).

CONCLUSIONS:

During IFNα treatment, the rate of transition to MDD was high in this cohort. Psychomotor retardation and somatic symptoms may represent a greater inflamed state pre-treatment. This iatrogenic model of MDD may offer important insights into wider depression aetiology.

The relationship between the notion of *information* in information theory, and the notion of *information processing* in cognitive science, has long been controversial. But as the present paper shows, part of the disagreement arises from conflating different formulations of measurement. Clarifying distinctions reveals it is the context-free nature of Shannon's information average that is particular problematic from the cognitive point of view. Context-sensitive evaluation is then shown to be a way of addressing the problems that arise.

Modern research on social norms makes an important distinction between descriptive norms (how people commonly behave) and injunctive norms (what one is morally obligated to do). Here we propose that this distinction is far from clear in the cognition of social norms. In a first study, using the implicit association test, the concepts of ‘‘common’’ and ‘‘moral’’ were found to be strongly associated. Some implications of this automatic common–moral association were investigated in a subsequent series of experiments: Our participants tended to make explicit inferences from descriptive norms to injunctive norms and vice versa; they tended to mix up descriptive and injunctive concepts in recall tasks; and frequency information influenced participants’ own moral judgments. We conclude by discussing how the common–moral association could play a role in the dynamics of social norms.

The only evidence for nutrient selection comes from baseline or treatment effects on nutrient intakes that are qualitatively similar when sensorily contrasting forms of each macronutrient are investigated and/or dietary compositions and strains of rat or mouse are different within or between laboratories. By that criterion the only potential case of a treatment reliably altering macronutrient selection identified in the present review of the literature is d-norfenfluramine, fluoxetine and paraventricular serotonin (5-HT) reducing the intake of dextrin-containing diets at early dark. The only clear example of reverse effects of an agonist and an antagonist on dietary intake was found with serotonergic agents. Claims for catecholaminergic or opioid involvement in protein intake and peptidergic involvement in carbohydrate intake were not substantiated. There remain the issues of which learnt macronutrient-specific postgastric actions and sensory cues from the affected diet rely on the neural pathway(s) on which the drug is acting to alter dietary selection. Until experiments address these questions, the neural bases of nutrient-specific appetites will remain unknown. Drug effects must be consistent across differently textured and flavoured versions of each macronutrient tested.

Across two experiments the present research examined the use of social-consensus feedback as a strategy for overcoming spontaneous gender stereotyping when certain social role nouns and professional terms are read. Participants were presented with word pairs comprising a role noun (e.g. surgeon) and a kinship term (e.g. mother), and asked to decide whether both terms could refer to the same person. In the absence of training, participants responded more slowly and less accurately to stereotype incongruent pairings (e.g. surgeon/mother) than stereotype congruent pairings (e.g. surgeon/father). When participants were provided with (fictitious) social consensus feedback, constructed so as to suggest that past participants did not succumb to stereotypes, performance to incongruent pairings improved significantly (Experiment 1). The mechanism(s) through which the social feedback operated were then investigated (Experiment 2), with results suggesting that success was owing to social compliance processes. Implications of findings for the field of discourse processing are discussed.

As part of a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of perceptual traits in healthy adults, we measured stereo acuity, the duration of alternative percepts in binocular rivalry and the extent of dichoptic masking in 1060 participants. We present the distributions of the measures, the correlations between measures, and their relationships to other psychophysical traits. We report sex differences, and correlations with age, interpupillary distance, eye dominance, phorias, visual acuity and personality. The GWAS, using data from 988 participants, yielded one genetic association that passed a permutation test for significance: The variant rs1022907 in the gene VTI1A was associated with self-reported ability to see autostereograms. We list a number of other suggestive genetic associations (p < 10−5).

In addition to temporal and spatial contributions, multimodal binding is also influenced by association strength and the congruency between stimulus elements. A paradigm was established in which an audio–visual stimulus consisting of four attributes (two visual, two auditory) was presented, followed by questions regarding the specific nature of two of those attributes. We wanted to know how association strength and congruency would modulate the basic effect that responding to same-modality information (two visual or two auditory) would be easier than retrieving different-modality information (one visual and one auditory). In Experiment 1, association strengths were compared across three conditions: baseline, intramodal (100 % association within modalities, thereby benefiting same-modality retrieval), and intermodal (100 % association between modalities, thereby benefiting different-modality retrieval). Association strength was shown to damage responses to same-modality information during intermodal conditions. In Experiment 2, association strength was manipulated identically, but was combined with cross-modally corresponding stimuli (further benefiting different-modality retrieval). The locus of the effect was again on responses to same-modality information, damaging responding during intermodal conditions but helping responding during intramodal conditions. The potential contributions of association strength and cross-modal congruency in promoting learning between vision and audition are discussed in relation to a potential default within-modality binding mechanism.

The effects of circadian rhythm, delayed access to food, bilateral subdiaphragmatic vagotomy and bilateral adrenal medullectomy were examined. Like normal insulin injected subcutaneously, 2-deoxy-D-glucose injected intraperitoneally induces feeding in sated rats by night as well as by day. The unmetabolized glucose analogue 3-O-methyl-D-glucopyranose detectably increases feeding by day. On delayed return of food after 2-deoxyglucose injection into mildly deprived rats, feeding is at first inhibited and then facilitated. Vagotomy but not medullectomy interferes with 2-deoxyglucose-induced feeding, whereas medullectomy but not vagotomy interferes with insulin-induced feeding, when dosages near the optima for intact rats are used. However, when low doses are given, neither surgically induced deficit is evident.

RATIONALE

Previous studies have shown that the effect of setting on drug-taking is substance specific in both humans and rats. In particular, we have shown that when the setting of drug self-administration (SA) coincides with the home environment of the rats (resident rats), the rats tend to prefer heroin to cocaine. The opposite was found in nonresident rats, for which the SA chambers represented a distinct environment.

OBJECTIVES

The aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of setting on the ability of different doses of cocaine and heroin to prime cocaine- versus heroin-seeking in rats that had been trained to self-administer both drugs and had then undergone an extinction procedure.

METHODS

Resident (N = 62) and nonresident (N = 63) rats with double-lumen intra-jugular catheters were trained to self-administer cocaine (400 μg/kg/infusion) and heroin (25 μg/kg/infusion) on alternate days for 10 consecutive daily sessions (3 h each). After the extinction phase, independent groups of rats were given a noncontingent intravenous infusion of heroin (25, 50, or 100 μg/kg) or cocaine (400, 800, or 1600 μg/kg), and drug-seeking was quantified by counting nonreinforced lever presses.

RESULTS

All resident and nonresident rats acquired heroin and cocaine SA. However, cocaine primings reinstated cocaine-seeking only in nonresident rats, whereas heroin primings reinstated heroin-seeking only in resident rats.

CONCLUSIONS

We report here that the susceptibility to relapse into drug-seeking behavior is drug-specific and setting-specific, confirming the crucial role played by drug, set, and setting interactions in drug addiction.

The recall of personal experiences relevant to a claim of food allergy or food intolerance is assessed by a psychologically validated tool for evidence that the suspected food could have caused the adverse symptom suffered. The tool looks at recall from memory of a particular episode or episodes when food was followed by symptoms resulting in self-diagnosis of food allergy or intolerance compared to merely theoretical knowledge that such symptoms could arise after eating the food. If there is detailed recall of events that point to the food as a potential cause of the symptom and the symptom is sufficiently serious, the tool user is recommended to seek testing at an allergy clinic or by the appropriate specialist for a non-allergic sensitivity. If what is recalled does not support the logical possibility of a causal connection between eating that food and occurrence of the symptom, then the user of the tool is pointed to other potential sources of the problem. The user is also recommended to investigate remedies other than avoidance of the food that had been blamed.

This paper illustrates how perception is achieved through interactions among the psychophysical functions of judged features of an object. The theory is that the perceiver places processed features in a multidimensional space of discriminal processes. Each dimension is scaled in units of discrimination performance. The zero coordinate of each feature is its level in an internal standard (norm) established by previous experience of that category of object in context. Experiments are reported which show that one, two, or three concurrent single-featured objects matched the multiple features of another object in two ways. Either stimulation from the two objects had discrimination distances from norm that added, or the stimulation by one object was processed through a concept describing stimulation by the other object. It follows that, in this case, perception via a receptor for the multi-featured object can be replaced by a point of balance among receptors for each single feature. The object with its own receptor is the gustatory stimulant L-glutamic acid as its monosodium salt. The features that stimulate diverse gustatory receptors of their own are sodium chloride, citric acid, sucrose, and caffeine. A more complex approach to dimensional coding was developed earlier for photoreceptors in colour judgments. The present approach is modality independent, mathematically simple, and economical in experimental data.

Advance in food science depends on measuring the factors in human perception that influence eaters' activities with branded products. Assessed samples must include at least two levels of a sensed material characteristic (e.g. sucrose) or conceptual marketing attribute (e.g. “low fat”), minimally confounded by other features. Each feature needs to be measured for its effect on the individual's objective achievement of choosing among the samples for a familiar context of use. These influences interact, consciously and unconsciously. This theory of how a mind works has generated a wide range of scientifically illuminating and commercially practical examples, illustrated in this review.

Dietary guidelines for the general public aim to lower the incidence of nutrition-related diseases by influencing habitual food choices. Yet little is known about how well the guidelines are matched by the actual practices that people regard as healthy or unhealthy. In the present study, British residents were asked in a cognitive interview to write a description of an occasion when either they ate in an unhealthy way or the eating was healthy. The reported foods and drinks, as well as sort of occasion, location, people present and time of day, were categorised by verbal and semantic similarities. The number of mentions of terms in each category was then contrasted between groups in exact probability tests. Perceived unhealthy and healthy eating occasions differed reliably in the sorts of foods and the contexts reported. There was also full agreement with the national guidelines on eating plenty of fruit and vegetables, eating small amounts of foods and drinks high in fat and/or sugar, drinking plenty of water, and cutting down on alcohol. There was a tendency to regard choices of bread, rice, potatoes, pasta and other starchy foods as healthy. Reported healthy and unhealthy eating did not differ in incidences of meat, fish, eggs, beans and other non-dairy sources of protein or of dairy foods and milk. These results indicate that operationally clear recommendations by health professionals are well understood in this culture but members of the public do not make clear distinctions in the case of foods that can be included in moderate amounts in a healthy diet.

Dimming and brightening aftereffects occur after exposure to a temporal luminance sawtooth stimulus: A subsequently presented steady test field appears to become progressively dimmer or brighter, depending on the polarity of the adapting sawtooth. Although described as "dimming" and "brightening," it is plausible that a component of the aftereffects is based on contrast changes rather than on luminance changes. We conducted two experiments to reveal any contrast component. In the first we investigated whether the aftereffects result from the same mechanism that causes a polarity-selective loss in contrast sensitivity following luminance sawtooth adaptation. We manipulated test contrast: If a component of the aftereffect results from a polarity selective loss of contrast sensitivity we would expect that the aftereffects would differ in magnitude depending on the contrast polarity of the test fields. We found no effect of test-field polarity. In the second experiment we used an adapting sawtooth with a polarity consistent in contrast but alternating in luminance in order to induce a potential equivalent aftereffect of contrast. Again, we found no evidence that the aftereffects result from contrast adaptation. In a third experiment, we used S-cone isolating stimuli to discover whether there are S-cone dimming and brightening aftereffects. We found no aftereffects. However, in a fourth experiment we replicated Krauskopf and Zaidi's (1986) finding that adaptation to S-cone sawtooth stimuli affects thresholds for increment and decrement detection. The mechanism underlying the dimming and brightening aftereffects thus seems to be independent of the mechanism underlying the concurrent polarity selective reductions in contrast sensitivity.

HIV retinopathy is the most common non-infectious complication in the eyes of HIV-positive individuals. Oncotic lesions in the retinal nerve fiber layer, referred to as cotton wool spots (CWS), and intraretinal (IR) hemorrhages are frequently observed but are not unique to this pathology. HIV-positive patients have impaired color vision and contrast sensitivity, which worsens with age. Evidence of inner-retinal lesions and damage have been documented ophthalmoscopically, however their long term structural effect has not been investigated. It has been hypothesized that they may be partially responsible for loss of visual function and visual field. In this study we utilized clinical data, retinal imaging and transcriptomics approaches to comprehensively interrogate non-infectious HIV retinopathy. The methods employed encompassed clinical examinations, fundus photography, indirect ophthalmoscopy, Farmsworth-Munsell 100 hue discrimination testing and Illumina BeadChip analyses. Here we show that changes in the outer retina, specifically in the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) and photoreceptor outer segments (POS) contribute to vision changes in non-infectious HIV retinopathy. We find that in HIV-positive retinae there is an induction of rhodopsin and other transcripts (including PDE6A, PDE6B, PDE6G, CNGA1, CNGB1, CRX, NRL) involved in visual transduction, as well as structural components of the rod photoreceptors (ABCA4 and ROM1). This is consistent with an increased rate of renewal of rod outer segments induced via increased phagocytosis by HIV-infected RPE previously reported in culture. Cone-specific transcripts (OPN1SW, OPN1LW, PDE6C, PDE6H and GRK7) are uniformly downregulated in HIV positive retina, likely due to a partial loss of cone photoreceptors. Active cotton wool spots and intraretinal hemorrhages (IRH) may not affect photoreceptors directly and the interaction of photoreceptors with the aging RPE may be the key to the progressive vision changes in HIV-positive patients.

Deficits in sensitivity to visual stimuli of low spatial frequency and high temporal frequency (so-called frequency-doubled gratings) have been demonstrated both in schizophrenia and in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Such basic perceptual functions are ideal candidates for molecular genetic study, because the underlying neural mechanisms are well characterized; but they have sometimes been overlooked in favor of cognitive and neurophysiological endophenotypes, for which neural substrates are often unknown. Here, we report a genome-wide association study of a basic visual endophenotype associated with psychological disorder. Sensitivity to frequency-doubled gratings was measured in 1060 healthy young adults, and analyzed for association with genotype using linear regression at 642 758 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. A significant association (P = 7.9 × 10(-9) ) was found with the SNP marker rs1797052, situated in the 5'-untranslated region of PDZK1; each additional copy of the minor allele was associated with an increase in sensitivity equivalent to more than half a standard deviation. A permutation procedure, which accounts for multiple testing, showed that the association was significant at the α = 0.005 level. The region on chromosome 1q21.1 surrounding PDZK1 is an established susceptibility locus both for schizophrenia and for ASD, mirroring the common association of the visual endophenotype with the two disorders. PDZK1 interacts with N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors and neuroligins, which have been implicated in the etiologies of schizophrenia and ASD. These findings suggest that perceptual abnormalities observed in two different disorders may be linked by common genetic elements.

PURPOSE

We conducted a genome-wide association study to identify genetic factors that contribute to the etiology of heterophoria.

METHODS

We measured near and far vertical and horizontal phorias in 988 healthy adults aged 16 to 40 using the Keystone telebinocular with plates 5218 and 5219. We regressed degree of phoria against genotype at 642758 genetic loci. To control for false positives, we applied the conservative genome-wide permutation test to our data.

RESULTS

A locus at 6p22.2 was found to be associated with the degree of near horizontal phoria (P = 2.3 × 10(-8)). The P value resulting from a genome-wide permutation test was 0.014.

CONCLUSIONS

The strongest association signal arose from an intronic region of the gene ALDH5A1, which encodes the mitochondrial enzyme succinic semialdehyde dehydrogenase (SSADH), an enzyme involved in γ-aminobutyric acid metabolism. Succinic semialdehyde dehydrogenase deficiency, resulting from mutations of ALDH5A1, causes a variety of neural and behavioral abnormalities, including strabismus. Variation in ALDH5A1 is likely to contribute to degree of horizontal phoria.

The OSCAR test, a clinical device that uses counterphase flicker photometry, is believed to be sensitive to the relative numbers of long-wavelength and middle-wavelength cones in the retina, as well as to individual variations in the spectral positions of the photopigments. As part of a population study of individual variations in perception, we obtained OSCAR settings from 1058 participants. We report the distribution characteristics for this cohort. A randomly selected subset of participants was tested twice at an interval of at least one week: the test-retest reliability (Spearman's rho) was 0.80. In a whole-genome association analysis we found a provisional association with a single nucleotide polymorphism (rs16844995). This marker is close to the gene RXRG, which encodes a nuclear receptor, retinoid X receptor γ. This nuclear receptor is already known to have a role in the differentiation of cones during the development of the eye, and we suggest that polymorphisms in or close to RXRG influence the relative probability with which long-wave and middle-wave opsin genes are expressed in human cones.

If unique hues have special status in phenomenological experience as perceptually pure, it seems reasonable to assume that they are represented more precisely by the visual system than are other colors. Following the method of Malkoc et al. (J. Opt. Soc. Am. A22, 2154 [2005]), we gathered unique and binary hue selections from 50 subjects. For these subjects we repeated the measurements in two separate sessions, allowing us to measure test-retest reliabilities (0.52≤ρ≤0.78; p≪0.01). We quantified the within-individual variability for selections of each hue. Adjusting for the differences in variability intrinsic to different regions of chromaticity space, we compared the within-individual variability for unique hues to that for binary hues. Surprisingly, we found that selections of unique hues did not show consistently lower variability than selections of binary hues. We repeated hue measurements in a single session for an independent sample of 58 subjects, using a different relative scaling of the cardinal axes of MacLeod-Boynton chromaticity space. Again, we found no consistent difference in adjusted within-individual variability for selections of unique and binary hues. Our finding does not depend on the particular scaling chosen for the Y axis of MacLeod-Boynton chromaticity space.

Red, green, blue, yellow, and white have been distinguished from other hues as unique. We present results from two experiments that undermine existing behavioral evidence to separate the unique hues from other colors. In Experiment 1 we used hue scaling, which has often been used to support the existence of unique hues, but has never been attempted with a set of non-unique primaries. Subjects were assigned to one of two experimental conditions. In the "unique" condition, they rated the proportions of red, yellow, blue, and green that they perceived in each of a series of test stimuli. In the "intermediate" condition, they rated the proportions of teal, purple, orange, and lime. We found, surprisingly, that results from the two conditions were largely equivalent. In Experiment 2, we investigated the effect of instruction on subjects' settings of unique hues. We found that altering the color terms given in the instructions to include intermediate hues led to significant shifts in the hue that subjects identified as unique. The results of both experiments question subjects' abilities to identify certain hues as unique.

Distinct neural populations carry signals from short-wave (S) cones. We used individual differences to test whether two types of pathways, those that receive excitatory input (S+) and those that receive inhibitory input (S-), contribute independently to psychophysical performance. We also conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to look for genetic correlates of the individual differences. Our psychophysical test was based on the Cambridge Color Test, but detection thresholds were measured separately for S-cone spatial increments and decrements. Our participants were 1060 healthy adults aged 16-40. Test-retest reliabilities for thresholds were good (ρ=0.64 for S-cone increments, 0.67 for decrements and 0.73 for the average of the two). "Regression scores," isolating variability unique to incremental or decremental sensitivity, were also reliable (ρ=0.53 for increments and ρ=0.51 for decrements). The correlation between incremental and decremental thresholds was ρ=0.65. No genetic markers reached genome-wide significance (p<5×10(-7)). We identified 18 "suggestive" loci (p<10(-5)). The significant test-retest reliabilities show stable individual differences in S-cone sensitivity in a normal adult population. Though a portion of the variance in sensitivity is shared between incremental and decremental sensitivity, over 26% of the variance is stable across individuals, but unique to increments or decrements, suggesting distinct neural substrates. Some of the variability in sensitivity is likely to be genetic. We note that four of the suggestive associations found in the GWAS are with genes that are involved in glucose metabolism or have been associated with diabetes.

The Mooney Face Test is a widely used test of face perception, but was originally designed to be administered by personal interview. We have developed a three-alternative forced-choice version for online testing. We tested 397 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 42 (M=24 years). There was a wide range of performance (64-100% correct; M=89.6%). We observed a significant sex difference favoring males (.31 standard deviation; p =.004). In addition, independently of sex, higher 2D:4D digit ratios were significantly associated with higher scores (ρ=.14, p=.006). A genome-wide association study (GWAS) for a subset of 370 participants identified an association between Mooney performance and a polymorphism in the RAPGEF5 gene (rs1522280; p=9.68×10(-8)). This association survives a permutation test (p=.031).

For anomalous trichromats, threshold contrasts for color differences captured by the L and M cones and their anomalous analogs are much higher than for normal trichromats. The greater spectral overlap of the cone sensitivities reduces chromatic contrast both at and above threshold. But above threshold, adaptively nonlinear processing might compensate for the chromatically impoverished photoreceptor inputs. Ratios of sensitivity for threshold variations and for color appearance along the two cardinal axes of MacLeod-Boynton chromaticity space were calculated for three groups: normals (N = 15), deuteranomals (N = 9), and protanomals (N = 5). Using a four-alternative forced choice (4AFC) task, threshold sensitivity was measured in four color-directions along the two cardinal axes. For the same participants, we reconstructed perceptual color spaces for the positions of 25 hues using multidimensional scaling (MDS). From the reconstructed color spaces we extracted "color difference ratios," defined as ratios for the size of perceived color differences along the L/(L + M) axis relative to those along the S/(L + M) axis, analogous to "sensitivity ratios" extracted from the 4AFC task. In the 4AFC task, sensitivity ratios were 38% of normal for deuteranomals and 19% of normal for protanomals. Yet, in the MDS results, color difference ratios were 86% of normal for deuteranomals and 67% of normal for protanomals. Thus, the contraction along the L/(L + M) axis shown in the perceptual color spaces of anomalous trichromats is far smaller than predicted by their reduced sensitivity, suggesting that an adaptive adjustment of postreceptoral gain may magnify the cone signals of anomalous trichromats to exploit the range of available postreceptoral neural signals.

Normal color vision depends on the relative rates at which photons are absorbed in three types of retinal cone:short-wave (S), middle-wave (M) and long-wave (L) cones, maximally sensitive near 430, 530 and 560nm, respectively. But 6% of men exhibit an X-linked variant form of color vision called deuteranomaly [1]. Their color vision is thought to depend on S cones and two forms of long-wave cone (L, L′) [2,3]. The two types of L cone contain photopigments that are maximally sensitive near 560nm, but their spectral sensitivities are different enough that the ratio of their activations gives a useful chromatic signal.

Individuals differ in their susceptibility to simultaneous contrast. Are the underlying differences in neural machinery conserved across different stimulus dimensions? We measured the extent to which 101 subjects perceived simultaneous contrast on the dimensions of luminance, colour, luminance contrast, colour contrast, orientation, spatial frequency, motion and numerosity. Individual differences showed re-test reliability for each dimension (0.32ICC(c,1)0.78, p0.05), but susceptibility to simultaneous contrast, with a few exceptions, was not correlated across dimensions. Either susceptibility to contrast arises empirically from an individual's interactions with the environment, or it is genetically determined but independently for different dimensions.

Some 12% of women are carriers of the mild, X-linked forms of color vision deficiencies called "anomalous trichromacy." Owing to random X chromosome inactivation, their retinae must contain four classes of cone rather than the normal three; and it has previously been speculated that these female carriers might be tetrachromatic, capable of discriminating spectral stimuli that are indistinguishable to the normal trichromat. However, the existing evidence is sparse and inconclusive. Here, we address the question using (a) a forced-choice version of the Rayleigh test, (b) a test using multidimensional scaling to reveal directly the dimensionality of the participants' color space, and (c) molecular genetic analyses to estimate the X-linked cone peak sensitivities of a selected sample of strong candidates for tetrachromacy. Our results suggest that most carriers of color anomaly do not exhibit four-dimensional color vision, and so we believe that anomalous trichromacy is unlikely to be maintained by an advantage to the carriers in discriminating colors. However, 1 of 24 obligate carriers of deuteranomaly exhibited tetrachromatic behavior on all our tests; this participant has three well-separated cone photopigments in the long-wave spectral region in addition to her short-wave cone. We assess the likelihood that behavioral tetrachromacy exists in the human population.

Kirschmann's Fourth Law states that the magnitude of simultaneous color contrast increases with the saturation of the inducing surround, but that the rate of increase reduces as saturation increases. Others since Kirschmann have agreed and disagreed. Here we show that the form of the relationship between simultaneous color contrast and inducer saturation depends on the method of measurement. Functions were measured by four methods: (i) asymmetric matching with a black surround, (ii) asymmetric matching with a surround metameric to equal energy white, (iii) dichoptic matching, and (iv) nulling an induced sinusoidal modulation. Results from the asymmetric matching conditions agreed with Kirschmann, whereas results from nulling and from dichoptic matching showed a more linear increase in simultaneous contrast with the saturation of the inducer. We conclude that the method certainly affects the conclusions reached, and that there may not be any "fair" way of measuring simultaneous contrast.

The sensory abnormalities associated with disorders such as dyslexia, autism and schizophrenia have often been attributed to a generalized deficit in the visual magnocellular-dorsal stream and its auditory homologue. To probe magnocellular function, various psychophysical tasks are often employed that require the processing of rapidly changing stimuli. But is performance on these several tasks supported by a common substrate? To answer this question, we tested a cohort of 1060 individuals on four 'magnocellular tasks': detection of low-spatial-frequency gratings reversing in contrast at a high temporal frequency (so-called frequency-doubled gratings); detection of pulsed low-spatial-frequency gratings on a steady luminance pedestal; detection of coherent motion; and auditory discrimination of temporal order. Although all tasks showed test-retest reliability, only one pair shared more than 4 per cent of variance. Correlations within the set of 'magnocellular tasks' were similar to the correlations between those tasks and a 'non-magnocellular task', and there was little consistency between 'magnocellular deficit' groups comprising individuals with the lowest sensitivity for each task. Our results suggest that different 'magnocellular tasks' reflect different sources of variance, and thus are not general measures of 'magnocellular function'.

Managers in five nations rated scenarios exemplifying indigenous forms of informal influence whose cultural origins were concealed. Locally generated scenarios illustrated episodes of guanxi, wasta, jeitinho, svyazi and pulling strings. Local scenarios were judged representative of local influence processes but so too were some scenarios derived from other contexts. Furthermore, many scenarios were rated as more typical in
non-local contexts. While these influence processes are found to be widely disseminated, they occur more frequently in contexts characterized by high self-enhancement values, low self-transcendence values and high endorsement of business corruptibility. Implications for a fuller understanding of local business practices are discussed.

Identifying how memories are organized remains a fundamental issue in psychology. Previous work has shown that visual short-term memory is organized according to the object of origin, with participants being better at retrieving multiple pieces of information from the same object than from different objects. However, it is not yet clear whether similar memory structures are employed for other modalities, such as audition. Under analogous conditions in the auditory domain, we found that short-term memories for sound can also be organized according to object, with a same-object advantage being demonstrated for the retrieval of information in an auditory scene defined by two complex sounds overlapping in both space and time. Our results provide support for the notion of an auditory object, in addition to the continued identification of similar processing constraints across visual and auditory domains. The identification of modality-independent organizational principles of memory, such as object-based coding, suggests possible mechanisms by which the human processing system remembers multimodal experiences.

The effects of local and global context on concurrent sound segregation were examined using a mistuned harmonic paradigm. Presented with the same sounds over three conditions, participants were asked to either categorise the incoming complex according to pitch or harmonicity (active listening) or watch a muted subtitled movie of their choice (passive listening). Global context was defined according to task instruction, while local context was defined relative to the repetition or change of harmonicity across trials. An interaction between global and local context in both behavioural and event-related potential measures was found, with participants showing sensitivity to change and repetition in harmonicity when it was task-relevant, in addition to enhanced P3 amplitude for cases where a tuned stimulus changed into a mistuned stimulus over consecutive trials. The data are discussed in terms of current models of concurrent sound perception and how top–down processes might influence these mechanisms.

The use of lectures is ubiquitous in higher-education institutions, but also heavily criticized from an andragogical viewpoint. A current challenge for lecturers is to provide opportunities for active learning during these sessions and to evaluate their impact on student experience. Three one-minute interventions based on the lecture materials (write down one thing you have already learnt, one question you would like answering, and take a break) were introduced approximately 20, 30 and 40 minutes into the lecture and assessed with respect to engagement over a five-week period on a final-year psychology option. Students were invited to record their current level of lecture engagement every 5 minutes. Both between-and within-subject analyses revealed a significant increase in lecture engagement for the first intervention during the first intervention week relative to baseline weeks. The data show an enhancement of student engagement with certain small-scale interventions during large-scale teaching.

The perception of written letters reflects the action sequences that produce them. Faster recognition is observed for letters presented as sequences of strokes in a temporal order consistent with letter writing, compared to an inconsistent order. During a speeded letter identification task, parietal event-related potential (ERP) components were analysed separately for each stroke-frame in action-consistent and inconsistent stimulus sequences, during both passive and active (task-engaged) viewing. Electrophysiological data provided unique insights into stroke order priming by comparing local neural organisation during early, response-independent stages with later response-dependent stages. ERPs over posterior scalp areas revealed speeded visual processing for action-consistent stroke sequences prior to, and upon, letter completion. These signatures of perceptually facilitated letter processing were present in both active and passive viewing conditions, indicating that priming was not response-contingent, but rather an inherent part of visual letter perception. Stroke order priming is discussed in terms of matching stored letter production action codes, which upon activation provide top–down facilitation for visual processing of letters.

Three Garner interference experiments are described in which baseline, filtering, and correlated performance were assessed at both a macrolevel (condition average) and microlevel (intertrial contingency), using the pairwise combinations of auditory pitch, loudness, and location. Discrepancies between pairs of dimensions were revealed between macro- and microlevel estimates of performance and, also, between filtering costs and correlated benefits, relative to baseline. The examination of the intertrial effects associated with filtering costs suggested that effects of increased stimulus uncertainty were mandatory, whereas effects of irrelevant variation were not. The examination of the intertrial effects associated with correlated benefits suggested that the detection of stimulus repetition took precedence over that of stimulus change. Violations of standard horse race accounts of processing did not appear to stem from differences in the absolute or relative speeds of processing between dimensions but, rather, from the special role that certain dimensions (e.g., pitch) may play in certain modalities (e.g., audition). The utility of examining repetition effects is demonstrated by revealing a level of understanding regarding stimulus processing typically hidden by aggregated measures of performance.

We explored the tension between bottom – up and top – down contributions to object recognition in a collaboration between a visual artist and a cognitive psychologist. Initial pictorial renderings of objects and animals from various viewpoints were iteratively copied, and a series of drawings that changed from highly concrete images into highly abstract images was produced. In drawing identification in which sets were shown in reverse order, participants were more accurate, more confident, and quicker to correctly identify the evolving image when it was originally displayed from a canonical viewpoint with all salient features present. In drawing identification in which images were shown in random order, more abstract images could be resolved as a result of previously identifying a more concrete iteration of the same drawing. The results raise issues about the influence of viewpoint and feature on the preservation of pictorial images and about the role of labelling in the interpretation of ambiguous stimuli. In addition, the study highlights a procedure in which visual stimuli can degrade without necessitating a substantial loss of complexity.

A particularly unpleasant version of motion aftereffect was revealed after extensively playing proprietary video games in which the task is to co-ordinate spatially distributed responses in time with music. During playing, key musical and rhythmic phrases descend as coloured shapes from the top of the screen. After playing, static text is presented that appears to slide upwards, reflecting a neural reaction contrary to the falling shapes. The game both serves as a contemporary example of motion aftereffect and also highlights certain cross-modal associations between space, time, and sound in the design of stimulus-response relations.

While there are pointers relating to the consequences of repetition, a general framework regarding the cognitive implications of processing multidimensional stimuli as a function of previous stimulus history is currently lacking. Three experiments using sounds varying in location and pitch were carried out, in which the immediate consequences of repeating or changing task-relevant and task-irrelevant attributes were orthogonally examined. A consistent pattern of data was shown, in that the magnitude of selective attention failure was larger when the task-relevant value repeated across trials, while differences between dimensions were larger when the task-relevant value changed across trials. These effects of irrelevance and dimension as a function of intertrial contingency are summarized in a model depicting the dynamic allocation of processing resource.

Three dimensions of subordinate–supervisor relations (affective attachment, deference to
supervisor, and personal-life inclusion) that had been found by Y. Chen, Friedman, Yu, Fang,
and Lu to be characteristic of a guanxi relationship between subordinates and their supervisors
in China were surveyed in Taiwan, Singapore, and six non-Chinese cultural contexts. The
Affective Attachment and Deference subscales demonstrated full metric invariance whereas
the Personal-Life Inclusion subscale was found to have partial metric invariance across all eight
samples. Structural equation modeling revealed that the affective attachment dimension had
a cross-nationally invariant positive relationship to affective organizational commitment and a
negative relationship to turnover intention. The deference to the supervisor dimension had
invariant positive relationships with both affective and normative organizational commitment.
The personal-life inclusion dimension was unrelated to all outcomes. These results indicate the
relevance of aspects of guanxi to superior–subordinate relations in non-Chinese cultures. Studies
of indigenous concepts can contribute to a broader understanding of organizational behavior.

Competition between the senses can lead to modality dominance, where one sense influences multi-modal processing to a greater degree than another. Modality dominance can be influenced by task demands, speeds of processing, contextual influence and practice. To resolve previous discrepancies in these factors, we assessed modality dominance in an audio-visual paradigm controlling for the first three factors while manipulating the fourth. Following a uni-modal task in which auditory and visual processing were equated, participants completed a pre-practice selective attention bimodal task in which the congruency relationship and task-relevant modality changed across trials. Participants were given practice in one modality prior to completing a post-practice selective attention bimodal task similar to the first. The effects of practice were non-specific as participants were speeded post-practice relative to pre-practice. Congruent stimuli relative to incongruent stimuli, also led to increased processing efficiency. RT data tended to reveal symmetric modality switching costs whereas the error rate data tended to reveal asymmetric modality switching costs in which switching from auditory to visual processing was particularly costly. The data suggest that when a number of safeguards are put in place to equate auditory and visual responding as far as possible, evidence for an auditory advantage can arise.

In apparent conflict with the synchronicity model, we consider three types of evidence from the auditory literature (negative priming, perceptual learning, sensory gating) that reveal stimulus repetition can be associated with decreased rather than increased early evoked responses. The difficulty with consolidating a wide range of tasks in adjudicating between theories of repetition priming might be because the potentially critical roles of task, time and context are neglected.

Investigations of concurrent task and modality switching effects have to date been studied under conditions of uni-modal stimulus presentation. As such, it is difficult to directly compare resultant task and modality switching effects, as the stimuli afford both tasks on each trial, but only one modality. The current study investigated task and modality switching using bi-modal and bivalent stimulus presentation under various cue conditions: no cue, either task or modality (single cue) or task and modality (double cue), with participants responding to either the identity or the position of an audio–visual stimulus at each trial. In line with previous research, task and modality switching effects showed sub-additive patterns, with switching costs decreasing as pre-stimulus cue information increased. The current data also showed that modality switching costs were more malleable than task switching costs as the former were eliminated when full and single cue information was provided, as well as when participants responded to the more efficiently processed task (position relative to identity). Conversely, task switching costs were only eliminated in the full cue condition, but were present for both tasks and both modalities despite a similar asymmetry in efficiency (vision relative to audition). The data further show that the specific task-modality combination being responded to impacted on combined task- and modality switching effects, with those combinations leading to either the greatest or lowest costs contributing most heavily to sub-additivity.

When making decisions as to whether or not to bind auditory and visual information, temporal and stimulus factors both contribute to the presumption of multimodal unity. In order to study the interaction between these factors, we conducted an experiment in which auditory and visual stimuli were placed in competitive binding scenarios, whereby an auditory stimulus was assigned to either a primary or a secondary anchor in a visual context (VAV) or a visual stimulus was assigned to either a primary or secondary anchor in an auditory context (AVA). Temporal factors were manipulated by varying the onset of the to-be-bound stimulus in relation to the two anchors. Stimulus factors were manipulated by varying the magnitudes of the visual (size) and auditory (intensity) signals. The results supported the dominance of temporal factors in auditory contexts, in that effects of time were stronger in AVA than in VAV contexts, and stimulus factors in visual contexts, in that effects of magnitude were stronger in VAV than in AVA contexts. These findings indicate the precedence for temporal factors, with particular reliance on stimulus factors when the to-be-assigned stimulus was temporally ambiguous. Stimulus factors seem to be driven by high-magnitude presentation rather than cross-modal congruency. The interactions between temporal and stimulus factors, modality weighting, discriminability, and object representation highlight some of the factors that contribute to audio–visual binding.

Both lecture delivery and Facebook use are ubiquitous aspects of higher education from staff and student points-of-view, respectively. An attempt was made to integrate the two by setting up a Facebook group and delivering contemporary news stories in preparation for in-lecture discussion in a large-scale (1200 students across 5 sections) Introduction to Psychology class. Each section experienced two-thirds of the class with Facebook intervention and one-third without, thereby each section served as its own control group. Overall, Facebook intervention did not yield higher self-report of course engagement or understanding for those portions of the course. Only those individuals who never viewed the Facebook postings reported lower engagement and understanding of the in-lecture discussion, in addition to a lower appreciation of the link between the Facebook content and the lecture material. Our data suggest that successful integration of social media into the classroom is a challenging one and the relative success or failure of these interventions may stand or fall on the basis of a complex interaction between a number of factors including the timing of content delivery, the integration of social media content with course assessment and the students’ own perspective on using social media for academic purposes.

Previous research shows conflicting results on whether positive distraction, neutral distraction, or venting is most effective on short-term mood repair. This study addressed whether personality differences (the Big Five) influenced the effectiveness of these different short-term mood-repairing strategies using drawing production. Eighty seven undergraduate students were induced with sadness and engaged in positive distraction, neutral distraction, or venting drawing behaviour. Their mood was measured several times throughout the study, in addition to collecting personality information at the end of the session. At a group level, positive distraction led to significantly higher short-term mood repair than neutral distraction and venting. Personality differences did not significantly influence the effectiveness of any mood-repairing drawing strategies but the strongest personality candidates for impacting on the success of drawing-production intervention were high levels of extraversion and agreeableness during positive distraction, and, low levels of openness to experience during venting.

Computerised cognitive behavioural therapy (CCBT) is a clinically effective method of delivering CBT which may help address the under – treatment of common mental health disorders (CMHDs) in the population. However, concerns regarding acceptability, attrition rates and the therapeutic alliance are obstacles to widespread population dissemination. This thesis aimed to address these implementation issues by applying concepts from human – computer interaction (HCI) and attachment theory to the field of CCBT.
Chapter 1 presents a meta – analysis investigating the effectiveness of CCBT for CMHDs and moderators of this effect. Chapter 2 presents a systematic review and analysis conducted to examine predictors of CCBT engagement. A process – based model of engagement with CCBT developed from the findings of this review is also presented.
Adult attachment is known to influence engagement and alliance in face to face therapies, but research has not explored whether these relationships are mirrored in CCBT. Four empirical studies intended to address this question.
Study 1 used a student population based survey to explore the acceptability of CCBT in a student population and the associations with adult attachment. Results demonstrated adult attachment was not associated with acceptability of CCBT.
Study 2a utilised an open trial of a supported CCBT program to investigate whether adult attachment would predict engagement and alliance in vivo. Results showed attachment did not predict these outcomes. Study 2b utilised an open trial with a non – supported online CCBT program. Results indicated attachment security was positively associated with program engagement and alliance. It is proposed a combination of attachment system activation and perceiving computers as social actors account for these findings.
Study 3 used a randomised, experimental paradigm to test the benefits of security priming in CCBT. Security priming produced higher levels of program engagement and better working alliance compared to neutral primes. Furthermore these effects were not moderated by dispositional attachment styles.
These results demonstrate something so uniquely human, dispositional attachment orientations, founded on the intimate bonds we form in infancy and in adulthood , extend their influence into the experience of unguided CCBT, a solely human – computer interaction. Unguided – CCBT, a highly cost effective intervention with the potential for considerable public health impact, may benefit from incorporating security priming techniques in program designs to maximise engagement and alliance. Engagement and alliance is attainable in CCBT and paying attention to the attachment styles of program users may present a distinctive opportunity to overcome these implementation barriers.

Age-related decline in cognitive performance and brain structure can be offset by increased exercise. Little is known, however, about the cognitive and brain structural consequences of long-term high-effort endurance exercise. In a cross-sectional design, we recruited older adults who had been engaging in high-effort endurance exercise over at least twenty years, and compared their cognitive performance and brain structure with a non-sedentary control group similar in age, sex, education, IQ, depression levels, and other lifestyle factors. We hypothesized that long-term high-effort endurance exercise would protect against the age-related decline in memory, attention, and brain structure. Our findings, in contrast to previous studies, indicated that those participating in long-term high-effort endurance exercise, when compared without confounds to non-sedentary control volunteers, showed no differences on measures of speed of processing, executive function, incidental memory, episodic memory, working memory, or visual search. On measures of prospective memory, long-term exercisers performance suggested a self-imposed increase in effort, which did not impact on ability to complete the PM task. In complex attention tasks, they displayed a differential strategy to controls. Structurally, long-term exercisers only displayed higher diffuse axial diffusivity, an index of axonal integrity, than controls, but this did not correlate with any cognitive differences.

Synesthesia is a condition where presentation of one perceptual class consistently evokes additional experiences in different perceptual categories. Synesthesia is widely considered a congenital condition, although an alternative view is that it is underpinned by repeated exposure to combined perceptual features at key developmental stages. Here we explore the potential for repeated associative learning to shape and engender synesthetic experiences. Non-synesthetic adult participants engaged in an extensive training regime that involved adaptive memory and reading tasks, designed to reinforce 13 specific letter-color associations. Following training, subjects exhibited a range of standard behavioral and physiological markers for grapheme-color synesthesia; crucially, most also described perceiving color experiences for achromatic letters, inside and outside the lab, where such experiences are usually considered the hallmark of genuine synesthetes. Collectively our results are consistent with developmental accounts of synesthesia and illuminate a previously unsuspected potential for new learning to shape perceptual experience, even in adulthood.

Blindsight and other examples of unconscious knowledge and perception demonstrate dissociations between
judgment accuracy and metacognition: Studies reveal that participants’ judgment accuracy can be above chance
while their confidence ratings fail to discriminate right from wrong answers. Here, we demonstrated the opposite
dissociation: a reliable relationship between confidence and judgment accuracy (demonstrating metacognition) despite judgment accuracy being no better than chance. We evaluated the judgments of 450 participants who completed an AGL task. For each trial, participants decided whether a stimulus conformed to a given set of rules and rated their confidence in that judgment. We identified participants who performed at chance on the discrimination task, utilizing a subset of their responses, and then assessed the accuracy and the confidence-accuracy relationship of their remaining
responses. Analyses revealed above-chance metacognition among participants who did not exhibit decision accuracy.
This important new phenomenon, which we term blind insight, poses critical challenges to prevailing models of metacognition grounded in signal detection theory.

Anxiety is associated with increased attentional capture by threat. Previous studies have used simultaneous or briefly separated (<1 s) presentation of threat distractors and target stimuli. Here, we tested the hypothesis that high trait anxious participants would show a longer time window within which distractors cause disruption to subsequent task processing, and that this would particularly be observed for stimuli of moderate or ambiguous threat value. A novel temporally separated emotional distractor task was used. Face or house distractors were presented for 250 ms at short (∼1.6 s) or long (∼3 s) intervals prior to a letter string comprising Xs or Ns. Trait anxiety was associated with slowed identification of letter strings presented at long intervals after face distractors with part surprise/part fear expressions. In other words, these distractors had an impact on high anxious individuals' speed of target identification seconds after their offset. This was associated with increased activity in the fusiform gyrus and amygdala and reduced dorsal anterior cingulate recruitment. This pattern of activity may reflect impoverished recruitment of reactive control mechanisms to damp down stimulus-specific processing in subcortical and higher visual regions. These findings have implications for understanding how threat-related attentional biases in anxiety may lead to dysfunction in everyday settings where stimuli of moderate, potentially ambiguous, threat value such as those used here are fairly common, and where attentional disruption lasting several seconds may have a profound impact.

The past years have seen an increasing debate on cooperation and its unique human character. Philosophers and psychologists have proposed that cooperative activities are characterized by shared goals to which participants are committed through the ability to understand each other’s intentions. Despite its popularity, some serious issues arise with this approach to cooperation. First, one may challenge the assumption that high-level mental processes are necessary for engaging in acting cooperatively. If they are, then how do agents that do not possess such ability (preverbal children, or children with autism who are often claimed to be mind-blind) engage in cooperative exchanges, as the evidence suggests? Secondly, to define cooperation as the result of two de-contextualized minds reading each other’s intentions may fail to fully acknowledge the complexity of situated, interactional dynamics and the interplay of variables such as the participants’ relational and personal history and experience. In this paper we challenge such accounts of cooperation, calling for an embodied approach that sees cooperation not only as an individual attitude toward the other, but also as a property of interaction processes. Taking an enactive perspective, we argue that cooperation is an intrinsic part of any interaction, and that there can be cooperative interaction before complex communicative abilities are achieved. The issue then is not whether one is able or not to read the other’s intentions, but what it takes to participate in joint action. From this basic account, it should be possible to build up more complex forms of cooperation as needed. Addressing the study of cooperation in these terms may enhance our understanding of human social development, and foster our knowledge of different ways of engaging with others, as in the case of autism.

Investigation of synesthesia phenomenology in adults is needed to constrain accounts of developmental trajectories of this trait. We report an extended phenomenological investigation of sequence-space synesthesia in a single case (AB). We used the Elicitation Interview (EI) method to facilitate repeated exploration of AB's synesthetic experience. During an EI the subject's attention is selectively guided by the interviewer in order to reveal precise details about the experience. Detailed analysis of the resulting 9 h of interview transcripts provided a comprehensive description of AB's synesthetic experience, including several novel observations. For example, we describe a specific spatial reference frame (a "mental room") in which AB's concurrents occur, and which overlays his perception of the real world (the "physical room"). AB is able to switch his attention voluntarily between this mental room and the physical room. Exemplifying the EI method, some of our observations were previously unknown even to AB. For example, AB initially reported to experience concurrents following visual presentation, yet we determined that in the majority of cases the concurrent followed an internal verbalization of the inducer, indicating an auditory component to sequence-space synesthesia. This finding is congruent with typical rehearsal of inducer sequences during development, implicating cross-modal interactions between auditory and visual systems in the genesis of this synesthetic form. To our knowledge, this paper describes the first application of an EI to synesthesia, and the first systematic longitudinal investigation of the first-person experience of synesthesia since the re-emergence of interest in this topic in the 1980's. These descriptions move beyond rudimentary graphical or spatial representations of the synesthetic spatial form, thereby providing new targets for neurobehavioral analysis.

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of emotional intelligence, social support and contextual factors on the general health of infertile women. A sample of involuntarily childless women aged 25-45 living in the UK (n = 148) and Pakistan (n = 164) completed a self-administered questionnaire. Although there were no significant differences in total scores on the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), British women reported greater anxiety, insomnia and social dysfunction, and Pakistani women reported greater depression and somatic symptoms. Important differences in putative correlates of GHQ scores were found between the samples. British women reported significantly greater emotional satisfaction, greater satisfaction with medical information, greater satisfaction with medical care, and greater actual received support Pakistani women reported greater emotional intelligence. Regression analysis to identify correlates of higher GHQ scores revealed that greater received social support was a common correlate of better GHQ scores among British and Pakistan women. Additional correlates of better GHQ scores among British women were greater emotional intelligence and more emotional satisfaction in their relationships (overall R2 = ). Additional correlates among Pakistani women were greater education, greater perceived available social support, and a nuclear family system rather than an extended family (overall R2 = ). Results suggest that psychological facets of infertility should be addressed as part of a holistic approach to the care of infertile women. They highlight a need to improve social support and to incorporate emotional intelligence training in therapeutic interventions to improve the psychological well-being of infertile women.

Objective: This paper illustrates how qualitative methods can be used in the development and evaluation of behavior change interventions. Although many campaigns advise young people to drink responsibly, few clarify how to convert this general advice into specific behavioral strategies. Resilience-based approaches argue that treating young non-drinkers and moderate drinkers as “experts” in responsible alcohol use may facilitate co-creation of acceptable interventions that focus on how to change behavior. Methods: Four distinct phases of intervention development were linked to past research and future developments. Results: First, analysis of correlates of alcohol use using data from a survey of 1412 people aged 16-21 indicated that alcohol harm-reduction interventions should help young people to develop skills and strategies to resist alcohol. Second, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of 25 interviews with people purposively-selected from among the survey sample identified general strategies and specific tactics used by young people to manage opportunities to drink. Third, insights from the first two phases and past qualitative research guided development of video resources to be use in school-based alcohol education to illustrate strategies and tactics for moderate- or non-use of alcohol. Fourth, 18 focus groups with students and teachers were used to evaluate the video: structured Thematic Analysis indicated that after revision the video would be a valuable addition to school-based alcohol education. Conclusions: Findings from the four phases highlight the value of using different qualitative and quantitative methods as part of a program of work designed to inform the development, refinement, and evaluation of health psychology interventions.

This study adopted a discursive approach to explore how not drinking alcohol (non-drinking) is construed in relation to masculine identity among 12 undergraduate interviewees. Three prominent discourses were revealed. First, non-drinking was constructed as something strange requiring explanation. Second, contradictory discourses constructed non-drinking as, simultaneously, unsociable yet reflective of greater sociability. Third, non-drinking was constructed as something which has greater negative social consequences for men than for women. Opportunities for challenging traditional gender role expectations are considered.

Background:
To counter the disproportionate impact of sexually transmissible infections (STIs) among young people and encourage higher levels of STI testing, it is necessary to identify the factors that influence STI testing.
Methods:
A mixed-methods study incorporating a cross-sectional quantitative survey and qualitative analysis of individual interviews was conducted in England. Some 275 university students aged 17-25 years completed an online questionnaire. Interviews were conducted with a purposively selected sample of eight men and women.
Results:
Multivariate analysis of quantitative data revealed that injunctive norms (i.e. a desire to comply with others' wishes for testing), descriptive norms (i.e. perceptions of others' behaviour) and shame related to STIs predicted past testing behaviour. Intention to undergo testing was predicted by greater perceived susceptibility, past testing, stronger injunctive norms and greater willingness to disclose sexual histories. Qualitative analysis of interview data confirmed the importance of perceived susceptibility, normative beliefs, stigma and shame, and perceived ease of testing.
Conclusions:
To increase STI testing among young people, there is a need to promote pro-testing norms, address low perceived susceptibility and make testing easier.

Efforts to discourage excessive alcohol use among young people can only be effective if the target audience is exposed to, attends to, and comprehends key messages. The aim of this study was to examine age- and sex-differences in drinking motives to better inform development of targeted interventions to reduce alcohol-related harm. Thirty individual interviews and 12 group interviews were conducted with English 13-25 year olds. Interviewees gave multiple motivations for drinking - especially those related to image and reputation, and played down the health implications of heavy drinking. Negative aspects of drinking - caring for drunk friends, being cared for when drunk, and suffering through hangovers with friends - were considered to offer opportunities for closer inter-personal bonding than other social activities. Respondents distanced themselves from “problem” drinkers, but disapproved of others’ problematic drinking or antisocial behaviour. Narrative messages demonstrating the social consequences of excessive consumption were preferred to single, static messages emphasising risk or harm. Interviewees noted that interventions must use an engaging tone or pitch: they considered many campaigns to be patronising or preaching. A lack of consensus between age-and sex-groups highlighted a need for multifaceted, multi-modal approaches that utilise mobile technologies and new media.

Introduction and Aims: To encourage moderate alcohol consumption, many governments have developed guidelines for alcohol intake, guidelines for alcohol consumption during pregnancy, and legislation relating to blood alcohol limits when driving. The aim of this study was to determine the degree of international consensus within such guidelines. Design and Methods: Official definitions of standard and consumption guidelines were searched for on government websites, including all 27 European Union Member States and countries from all global geographic regions. Results: There was a remarkable lack of agreement about what constitutes harmful or excessive alcohol consumption on a daily basis, a weekly basis, and when driving, with no consensus about the ratios of consumption guidelines for men and women. Discussion and Conclusions: International consensus in low risk drinking guidelines is an important - and achievable - goal. Such agreement would facilitate consistent labelling of packaged products and could help to promote moderate alcohol consumption. However, there are some paradoxes related to alcohol content labelling and people’s use of such information: although clearer information could increase people’s capacity to monitor and regulate their alcohol consumption, not all drinkers are motivated to drink moderately or sensibly, and drinkers who intend to get drunk may use alcohol content labelling to select more alcoholic products.

Objective: Health behaviors are important resources for the development and display of masculine identity. The aim of this mixed-method study was to examine how “masculine capital” is accrued via traditionally masculine behaviors and used to permit nonmasculine behavior. Methods: An online survey assessing personal importance of gender identity, gender role stereotypes, and beliefs about the gender of various health behaviors was completed by 731 university students. Interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 16 of these men and women. Results: Quantitative data showed significant positive associations between perceived masculinity and engagement in a greater number of traditionally masculine health behaviors. Such patterns were clearest among young men and women who endorsed gender role stereotypes and gave greater importance to their own gender identity. Qualitative data supported the quantitative data: participants with more traditional gender role beliefs had more strict beliefs about the masculinity of various health behaviors. When asked about their own experiences, many men described
having engaged in traditionally masculine health-related behaviors so as to accrue masculine capital or use it to permit nonmasculine (or feminine) behavior. Conclusions: The novel use of a gender-relations approach in this mixed-method study of young men and women expanded on earlier smaller scale studies of men and masculine capital. The findings add to understanding of the concept of “masculine capital” and suggest how it may aid efforts to better understand and improve young men’s health. Young men’s
concerns about masculinity could be harnessed to encourage healthy “masculine” behavior. However, such approaches may not be effective for men who eschew traditional definitions of masculinity. Furthermore, failure to question socially constructed definitions of gender may reinforce stereotypes that restrict men’s and women’s opportunities.

Why do we repeat choices that we know are bad for us? Decision making is characterized by the parallel engagement of two distinct systems, goal-directed and habitual, thought to arise from two computational learning mechanisms, model-based and model-free. The habitual system is a candidate source of pathological fixedness. Using a decision task that measures the contribution to learning of either mechanism, we show a bias towards model-free (habit) acquisition in disorders involving both natural (binge eating) and artificial (methamphetamine) rewards, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. This favoring of model-free learning may underlie the repetitive behaviors that ultimately dominate in these disorders. Further, we show that the habit formation bias is associated with lower gray matter volumes in caudate and medial orbitofrontal cortex. Our findings suggest that the dysfunction in a common neurocomputational mechanism may underlie diverse disorders involving compulsion.Molecular Psychiatry advance online publication, 20 May 2014; doi:10.1038/mp.2014.44.

Although compulsive sexual behaviour (CSB) has been conceptualized as a "behavioural" addiction and common or overlapping neural circuits may govern the processing of natural and drug rewards, little is known regarding the responses to sexually explicit materials in individuals with and without CSB. Here, the processing of cues of varying sexual content was assessed in individuals with and without CSB, focusing on neural regions identified in prior studies of drug-cue reactivity. 19 CSB subjects and 19 healthy volunteers were assessed using functional MRI comparing sexually explicit videos with non-sexual exciting videos. Ratings of sexual desire and liking were obtained. Relative to healthy volunteers, CSB subjects had greater desire but similar liking scores in response to the sexually explicit videos. Exposure to sexually explicit cues in CSB compared to non-CSB subjects was associated with activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate, ventral striatum and amygdala. Functional connectivity of the dorsal anterior cingulate-ventral striatum-amygdala network was associated with subjective sexual desire (but not liking) to a greater degree in CSB relative to non-CSB subjects. The dissociation between desire or wanting and liking is consistent with theories of incentive motivation underlying CSB as in drug addictions. Neural differences in the processing of sexual-cue reactivity were identified in CSB subjects in regions previously implicated in drug-cue reactivity studies. The greater engagement of corticostriatal limbic circuitry in CSB following exposure to sexual cues suggests neural mechanisms underlying CSB and potential biological targets for interventions.

Abstract
Objective
This study aimed to explore cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between pathological worry and fatigue in a working population.

Methods
In employees with very low or very high fatigue levels, psychometrics of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ; measuring pathological worry) and the Checklist Individual Strength (CIS; measuring fatigue) were examined and their cross-sectional and longitudinal associations were explored.

Results
Pathological worry and fatigue can be measured as different constructs. However, pathological worry and fatigue were also associated on a cross-sectional level. Pathological worry predicted fatigue level 10 months later, but this association disappeared after adjustment for the cross-sectional association between pathological worry and fatigue.

Conclusion
Although they can be measured as different constructs, pathological worry and fatigue seem to be associated. When studying longitudinal relations between pathological worry and fatigue, their cross-sectional association should be taken into account. Pathological worry might not be a risk factor for fatigue per se, but might act more like a mediating factor.

Introduction and Aims

The aims of this study were to examine young people's belief in the effectiveness of various alcohol control strategies and to identify demographic, attitudinal and behavioural correlates of perceived effectiveness.

Design and Methods

An online questionnaire hosted on a secure server was completed by 1418 men and women aged 16–21 years living in South-East England. It assessed the perceived effectiveness of various alcohol control strategies. Key correlates included sensation seeking, impulsivity, conscientiousness, alcohol outcome expectancies, drink refusal self-efficacy, perceived peer alcohol use and Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test scores.

Results

The most effective strategies were perceived to be enforcing responsible service legislation, strictly monitoring late-night licensed premises and teaching alcohol refusal skills. Greater belief in the effectiveness of alcohol control strategies was expressed by older participants, those who consumed less alcohol and those who expected more negative outcomes from alcohol consumption.

Discussion and Conclusions

The data suggest that in order to increase the perceived effectiveness of alcohol control strategies, we may need to address young people's beliefs about the negative outcomes of alcohol use. Strategies that young people believe are effective may be easier to implement, but this does not imply that unpopular but effective strategies should not be tried

The aim of this study was to examine whether – in terms of personality characteristics and beliefs – former-drinkers and people who have never consumed alcohol exist on a continuum that includes low-risk drinkers and hazardous drinkers, or are distinct groups. An online questionnaire hosted on a secure server was completed by 1418 young people (642 men and 776 women) aged 16–21 living in South-East England. Participants' scores on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) were used to classify them as non-drinkers, former-drinkers, low-risk drinkers or hazardous drinkers. Multinomial logistic regression identified eight significant multivariate correlates that explained 39% of the variance in men's AUDIT category membership (χ2(24) = 263.32, p < .01), and seven significant multivariate correlates that explained 41% of the variance in women's AUDIT category membership (χ2(21) = 332.91, p < .01). The results suggest that non-drinkers and former-drinkers are more similar to each other than they are to both low risk and hazardous drinkers. We should not, therefore, treat these groups of young people as representing a drinking continuum. In particular, interventions for high risk young drinkers may be more effective if distinguished from general campaigns intended for all young people.

Lack of adherence to health-promoting advice challenges the successful prevention and management of many conditions. The Health Belief Model (HBM) was developed in 1966 to predict health-promoting behaviour and has been used in patients with wide variety of disease. The HBM has also been used to inform the development of interventions to improve health behaviours. Several reviews have documented the HBM's performance in predicting behaviour, but no review has addressed its utility in the design of interventions or the efficacy of these interventions. A systematic review was conducted to identify interventional studies which use the HBM as the theoretical basis for intervention design. The HBM has been used continuously in the development of behaviour change interventions for 40 years. Of 18 eligible studies, 14 (78%) reported significant improvements in adherence, with 7 (39%) showing moderate to large effects. However, only six studies used the HBM in its entirety and five different studies measured health beliefs as outcomes. Intervention success appeared to be unrelated to HBM construct addressed challenging the utility of this model as the theoretical basis for adherence-enhancing interventions. Interventions need to be described in full to allow for the identification of effective components and replication of studies.

Energy-containing beverages have a weak effect on satiety, limited by their fluid characteristics and perhaps because they are not considered ‘food’. This study investigated whether the context of consuming a beverage can influence the satiating power of its nutrients. Eighty participants consumed a lower- (LE, 75 kcal) and higher-energy (HE, 272 kcal) version of a beverage (covertly manipulated within-groups) on two test days, in one of four beverage contexts (between-groups): thin versions of the test-drinks were consumed as a thirst-quenching drink (n = 20), a filling snack (n = 20), or without additional information (n = 20). A fourth group consumed subtly thicker versions of the beverages without additional information (n = 20). Lunch intake 60 minutes later depended on the beverage context and energy content (p = 0.030): participants who consumed the thin beverages without additional information ate a similar amount of lunch after the LE and HE versions (LE = 475 kcal, HE = 464 kcal; p = 0.690) as did those participants who believed the beverages were designed to quench-thirst (LE = 442 kcal, HE = 402 kcal; p = 0.213), despite consuming an additional 197 kcal in the HE beverage. Consuming the beverage as a filling snack led participants to consume less at lunch after the HE beverage compared to the LE version (LE = 506 kcal, HE = 437 kcal; p = 0.025). This effect was also seen when the beverages were subtly thicker, with participants in this group displaying the largest response to the beverage’s energy content, consuming less at lunch after the HE version (LE = 552 kcal, HE = 415 kcal; p<0.001). These data indicate that beliefs about the consequences of consuming a beverage can affect the impact of its nutrients on appetite regulation and provide further evidence that a beverage’s sensory characteristics can limit its satiating power.

Cooperative social interaction is a complex skill that involves maintaining shared attention and continually negotiating a common frame of reference. Privileged in human evolution, cooperation provides support for the development of social-cognitive skills. We hypothesize that providing audio support for capturing playmates' attention will increase cooperative play in groups of young children. Attention capture was manipulated via an audio-augmented toy to boost children's attention bids. Study 1 (48 6- to 11-year-olds) showed that the augmented toy yielded significantly more cooperative play in triads compared to the same toy without augmentation. In Study 2 (33 7- to 9-year-olds) the augmented toy supported greater success of attention bids, which were associated with longer cooperative play, associated in turn with better group narratives. The results show how cooperation requires moment-by-moment coordination of attention and how we can manipulate environments to reveal and support mechanisms of social interaction. Our findings have implications for understanding the role of joint attention in the development of cooperative action and shared understanding.

The areas of the brain that encode color categorically have not yet been reliably identified. Here, we used functional MRI adaptation to identify neuronal populations that represent color categories irrespective of metric differences in color. Two colors were successively presented within a block of trials. The two colors were either from the same or different categories (e.g., “blue 1 and blue 2” or “blue 1 and green 1”), and the size of the hue difference was varied. Participants performed a target detection task unrelated to the difference in color. In the middle frontal gyrus of both hemispheres and to a lesser extent, the cerebellum, blood-oxygen level-dependent response was greater for colors from different categories relative to colors from the same category. Importantly, activation in these regions was not modulated by the size of the hue difference, suggesting that neurons in these regions represent color categorically, regardless of metric color difference. Representational similarity analyses, which investigated the similarity of the pattern of activity across local groups of voxels, identified other regions of the brain (including the visual cortex), which responded to metric but not categorical color differences. Therefore, categorical and metric hue differences appear to be coded in qualitatively different ways and in different brain regions. These findings have implications for the long-standing debate on the origin and nature of color categories, and also further our understanding of how color is processed by the brain.

The benefits of a Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) group for older people with recurrent and/or chronic depression were explored using a measure of mood (DASS-21) and well-being (Ryff Psychological Well-being Inventory). Thirteen participants started the study and outcome measures were recorded at baseline, post-MBCT group and at a 6-month follow-up. Although there was only a small sample size that had complete pre and post-group data (n = 9), improvements in depression and anxiety severity were noted and there was a significant improvement on ‘purpose in life’ and marginally significant improvement of ‘personal growth’, two of six domains on a measure of well-being. Participants were satisfied with the structure of the course but were less confident about committing to the daily practice after the group than pre-group. At 6 months follow-up, none of the group had relapsed into a major depressive episode. Further research with larger sample sizes and a control group to control for nonspecific therapeutic group factors is recommended.

Objective: Increased vulnerability to extraneous distraction is a key symptom of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), which may have particularly disruptive consequences. Here we apply Load Theory of attention to increase understanding of this symptom, and to explore a potential method for ameliorating it. Previous research in nonclinical populations has highlighted increased perceptual load as a means of improving the ability to focus attention and avoid distraction. The present study examines whether adults with ADHD can also benefit from conditions of high perceptual load to improve their focused attention abilities. Method: We tested adults with ADHD and age- and IQ-matched controls on a novel measure of irrelevant distraction under load, designed to parallel the form of distraction that is symptomatic of ADHD. During a letter search task, in which perceptual load was varied through search set size, participants were required to ignore salient yet entirely irrelevant distractors (colorful images of cartoon characters) presented infrequently (10% of trials). Results: The presence of these distractors produced a significantly greater interference effect on the search RTs for the adults with ADHD compared with controls, p = .005, ηp² = .231. Perceptual load, however, significantly reduced distractor interference for the ADHD group and was as effective in reducing the elevated distractor interference in ADHD as it was for controls. Conclusions: These findings clarify the nature of the attention deficit underlying increased distraction in ADHD, and demonstrate a tangible method for overcoming it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).

Resting state fMRI may help identify markers of risk for affective disorder. Given the comorbidity of anxiety and depressive disorders and the heterogeneity of these disorders as defined by DSM, an important challenge is to identify alterations in resting state brain connectivity uniquely associated with distinct profiles of negative affect. The current study aimed to address this by identifying differences in brain connectivity specifically linked to cognitive and physiological profiles of anxiety, controlling for depressed affect. We adopted a two-stage multivariate approach. Hierarchical clustering was used to independently identify dimensions of negative affective style and resting state brain networks. Combining the clustering results, we examined individual differences in resting state connectivity uniquely associated with subdimensions of anxious affect, controlling for depressed affect. Physiological and cognitive subdimensions of anxious affect were identified. Physiological anxiety was associated with widespread alterations in insula connectivity, including decreased connectivity between insula subregions and between the insula and other medial frontal and subcortical networks. This is consistent with the insula facilitating communication between medial frontal and subcortical regions to enable control of physiological affective states. Meanwhile, increased connectivity within a frontoparietal-posterior cingulate cortex-precunous network was specifically associated with cognitive anxiety, potentially reflecting increased spontaneous negative cognition (e.g., worry). These findings suggest that physiological and cognitive anxiety comprise subdimensions of anxiety-related affect and reveal associated alterations in brain connectivity.

We investigated perseveration and detour behaviour in 36 equids (Equus caballus, E. asinus, E. caballus × E. asinus) and compared these data to those of a previous study on domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). The animals were required to make a detour through a gap at one end of a straight barrier in order to reach a visible target. After one, two, three or four repeats (A trials), the gap was moved to the opposite end of the barrier (B trials). We recorded initial deviations from the correct solution path and the latency to crossing the barrier. In the A trials, mules crossed the barrier significantly faster than their parental species, the horses and donkeys. In the B trials, following the change of gap location, all species showed a reduction in performance. Both dogs and horses exhibited significant spatial perseveration, going initially to the previous gap location. Donkeys and mules, however, performed at chance level. Our results suggest that hybrid vigour in mules extends to spatial abilities.

It has been suggested that the process of domestication, at least in some species, has led to an innate predisposition to be skilled at reading human communicative and attentional cues. Adult domestic horses (Equus caballus) are highly sensitive to subtle bodily cues when determining if a person is attending to them but they are less adept at using human communicative cues in object choice tasks. Here we provide the first study into the ontogeny of such skills in order to gain insights into the mechanisms underlying these abilities. Compared with adult horses, youngsters under the age of three
could use body orientation but not more subtle cues such as head movement and open/closed eyes to correctly choose an attentive person to approach for food. Across two object choice experiments, the performance of young horses was comparable to that of adult horses – subjects were able to correctly choose a rewarded bucket using marker placement, pointing and touching cues but could not use body orientation, gaze, elbow pointing or tapping cues. Taken together these results do not support the theory that horses possess an innate predisposition to be particularly skilled at using human
cues. Horses’ ability to determine whether humans are attending to them using subtle body cues appears to require significant experience to fully develop and their perhaps less remarkable use of limited cues in object choice tasks, although present at a much earlier age, is likely to reflect a more general learning ability related to stimulus enhancement rather than
a specific ‘human-reading’ skill.

Donkeys and mules are frequently kept as companion animals for horses and ponies, with these different equids often being considered a homogenous group. However, the extent to which domestic equids form inter-specific bonds and display similar social behaviour when living in a mixed herd has not previously been studied. Here we compare the social organization of these three (sub)species when housed together, providing the first systematic analysis of how genetic hybridization is expressed in the social behaviour of mules. A group of 16 mules, donkeys and ponies was observed for 70 h and preferred associates, dominance rank and the linearity of the group's hierarchy was determined. The different equids formed distinct affiliative groups that were ordered in a linear hierarchy with ponies as the most dominant, mules in the middle ranks and donkeys in the lowest ranks. Within each equid subgroup, the strength of the hierarchy also varied. Thus in the present study, the three (sub)species displayed different social organization and levels of dominance and preferred to associate with animals of the same equid type, given the opportunity. These results suggest that different domestic equid (sub)species display variations in social behaviour that are likely to have a strong genetic basis.

This review examines the theoretical rationale for conceiving of systematic information processing as a proximal mechanism for perseverative worry. Systematic processing is characterised by detailed, analytical thought about issue-relevant information, and in this way, is similar to the persistent, detailed processing of information that typifies perseverative worry. We review the key features and determinants of systematic processing, and examine the application of systematic processing to perseverative worry. We argue that systematic processing is a mechanism involved in perseverative worry because (1) systematic processing is more likely to be deployed when individuals feel that they have not reached a satisfactory level of confidence in their judgement and this is similar to the worrier's striving to feel adequately prepared, to have considered every possible negative outcome/detect all potential danger, and to be sure that they will successfully cope with perceived future problems; (2) systematic processing and worry are influenced by similar psychological cognitive states and appraisals; and (3) the functional neuroanatomy underlying systematic processing is located in the same brain regions that are activated during worrying. This proposed mechanism is derived from core psychological processes and offers a number of clinical implications, including the identification of psychological states and appraisals that may benefit from therapeutic interventions for worry-based problems.

Previous research suggests that increasing beverage protein content enhances subsequent satiety, but whether this effect is entirely attributable to post-ingestive effects of protein or is partly caused by the distinct sensory characteristics imparted by the presence of protein remains unclear. To try and discriminate nutritive from sensory effects of added protein, we contrasted effects of three higher energy (c. 1.2MJ) and one lower energy (LE: 0.35MJ) drink preloads on subsequent appetite and lunch intake. Two higher energy drinks had 44% of energy from protein, one with the sensory characteristics of a juice drink (HP-) and the second thicker and more creamy (HP+). The high-carbohydrate preload (HC+) was matched for thickness and creaminess to the HP+ drink. Participants (healthy male volunteers, n=26) consumed significantly less at lunch after the HP+ (566g) and HC+ (572g) than after HP- (623g) and LE (668g) drinks, although the compensation for drink energy accounted for only 50% of extra energy at best. Appetite ratings indicated that participants felt significantly less hungry and more full immediately before lunch in HP+ and HC+ compared to LE, with HP- intermediate. The finding that protein generated stronger satiety in the context of a thicker creamier drink (HP+ but not HP-), and that an isoenergetic carbohydrate drink (HC+) matched in thickness and creaminess to the HP+ drink generated the same pattern of satiety as HP+ both suggest an important role for these sensory cues in the development of protein-based satiety.

The current study explored the relationship between three subtypes of impulsivity (Reflection Impulsivity, Impulsive Choice, and Impulsive Action) and measures of uncontrolled eating (TFEQ-D) and restraint (TFEQ-R). Eighty women classified as scoring higher or lower on TFEQ-D and TFEQ-R completed the Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFFT20), Delay Discounting Task (DDT), a Go No Go task, Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), and the Barrett Impulsivity Scale-11 (BIS-11). To test whether these relationships were affected by enforced controls over eating, half of the participants fasted the night before and ate breakfast in the laboratory before testing and half had no such control. Women scoring higher on the TFEQ-D were significantly more impulsive on the MFFT20 and BIS-11 overall but not on DDT, Go No Go or BART. Women scoring higher on TFEQ-R were significantly less impulsive on the Go No Go task but did not differ on other measures. The eating manipulation modulated responses on the BART and BIS-11 non-planning scale depending on TFEQ-D classification. These results confirm recent data that high scores on TFEQ-D are related to impulsivity, but imply this relates more to Reflection Impulsivity rather than Impulsive Choice or Action. In contrast restrained eating was associated with better inhibitory control. Taken together, these results suggest that subtypes of impulsivity further differentiate uncontrolled eating and restraint, and suggest that a poor ability to reflect on decisions may underlie some aspects of overeating.

Much remains unknown regarding the relationship between anxiety, worry, sustained attention, and frontal function. Here, we addressed this using a sustained attention task adapted for functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participants responded to presentation of simple stimuli, withholding responses to an infrequent “No Go” stimulus. Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) activity to “Go” trials, and dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC) activity to “No Go” trials were associated with faster error-free performance; consistent with DLPFC and dACC facilitating proactive and reactive control, respectively. Trait anxiety was linked to reduced recruitment of these regions, slower error-free performance, and decreased frontal-thalamo-striatal connectivity. This indicates an association between trait anxiety and impoverished frontal control of attention, even when external distractors are absent. In task blocks where commission errors were made, greater DLPFC-precuneus and DLPFC-posterior cingulate connectivity were associated with both trait anxiety and worry, indicative of increased off-task thought. Notably, unlike trait anxiety, worry was not linked to reduced frontal-striatal-thalamo connectivity, impoverished frontal recruitment, or slowed responding during blocks without commission errors, contrary to accounts proposing a direct causal link between worry and impoverished attentional control. This leads us to propose a new model of the relationship between anxiety, worry and frontal engagement in attentional control versus off-task thought.

Referential pointing is important in the development of language comprehension in the child, and is often considered a uniquely human capacity. Non-human great apes do point in captivity, usually for a human audience; but this has been interpreted as an interaction pattern learned from human caretakers, not indicative of natural deictic ability. In contrast, spontaneous pointing for other apes is almost unknown among wild ape populations, supporting doubts as to whether apes naturally have any capacity to point referentially. Here we describe and illustrate four cases of gestures by juvenile chimpanzees in the Sonso chimpanzee community, Budongo, Uganda, that, at some level, may appear to be deictic and referential. We discuss the possible reasons why chimpanzees, if they possess a capacity for referential pointing, do not use it more frequently.

Attention may be distracted from its intended focus both by stimuli in the external environment and by internally generated task-unrelated thoughts during mind wandering. However, previous attention research has focused almost exclusively on distraction by external stimuli, and the extent to which mind wandering relates to external distraction is as yet unclear. In the present study, the authors examined the relationship between individual differences in mind wandering and in the magnitude of distraction by either response-competing distractors or salient response-unrelated and task-irrelevant distractors. Self-reported susceptibility to mind wandering was found to positively correlate with task-irrelevant distraction but not with response-competition interference. These results reveal mind wandering as a manifestation of susceptibility to task-irrelevant distraction and establish a laboratory measure of general susceptibility to irrelevant distraction, including both internal and external sources.

In daily life (e.g., in the work environment) people are often distracted by stimuli that are clearly irrelevant to the current task and should be ignored. In contrast, much applied distraction research has focused on task interruptions by information that requires a response and therefore cannot be ignored. Moreover, the most commonly used laboratory measures of distractibility (e.g., in the response-competition and attentional-capture paradigms), typically involve distractors that are task relevant (e.g., through response associations or location). A series of experiments assessed interference effects from stimuli that are entirely unrelated to the current task, comparing the effects of perceptual load on task-irrelevant and task-relevant (response competing) distractors. The results showed that an entirely irrelevant distractor can interfere with task performance to the same extent as a response-competing distractor and that, as with other types of distractors, the interfering effects of the irrelevant distractors can be eliminated with high perceptual load in the relevant task. These findings establish a new laboratory measure of a form of distractibility common to everyday life and highlight load as an important determinant of such distractibility.

Studies of attentional capture often question whether an irrelevant distractor will capture attention or be successfully ignored (e.g., Folk & Remington, 1998). Here we establish a new measure of attentional capture by distractors that are entirely irrelevant to the task in terms of visual appearance, meaning, and location (colourful cartoon figures presented in the periphery while subjects perform a central letter-search task). The presence of such a distractor significantly increased search RTs, suggesting it captured attention despite its task-irrelevance. Such attentional capture was found regardless of whether the search target was a singleton or not, and for both frequent and infrequent distractors, as well as for meaningful and meaningless distractor stimuli, although the cost was greater for infrequent and meaningful distractors. These results establish stimulus-driven capture by entirely irrelevant distractors and thus provide a demonstration of attentional capture that is more akin to distraction by irrelevant stimuli in daily life.

Perceptual load has been found to be a powerful determinant of distractibility in laboratory tasks. The present study assessed how the effects of perceptual load on distractibility in the laboratory relate to individual differences in the likelihood of distractibility in daily life. Sixty-one subjects performed a response-competition task in which perceptual load was varied. As expected, individuals reporting high levels of distractibility (on the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire, an established measure of distractibility in daily life) experienced greater distractor interference than did individuals reporting low levels. The critical finding, however, was that this relationship was confined to task conditions of low perceptual load: High perceptual load reduced distractor interference for all subjects, eliminating any individual differences. These findings suggest that the level of perceptual load in a task can predict whether individual differences in distractibility will be found and that high-load modifications of daily tasks may prove useful in preventing unwanted consequences of high distractibility.

The question of whether a stimulus onset may capture attention when it is entirely irrelevant to the task and even in the absence of any attentional settings for abrupt onset or any dynamic changes has been highly controversial. In the present study, we designed a novel irrelevant capture task to address this question. Participants engaged in a continuous task making sequential forced choice (letter or digit) responses to each item in an alphanumeric matrix that remained on screen throughout many responses. This task therefore involved no attentional settings for onset or indeed any dynamic changes, yet the brief onset of an entirely irrelevant distractor (a cartoon picture) resulted in significant slowing of the two (Experiment 1) or three (Experiment 2) responses immediately following distractor appearance These findings provide a clear demonstration of attention being captured and captivated by a distractor that is entirely irrelevant to any attentional settings of the task.

Perceptual load is a key determinant of distraction by task-irrelevant stimuli (e.g., Lavie, N. (2005). Distracted and confused?: Selective attention under load. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 75-82). Here we establish the role of perceptual load in determining an internal form of distraction by task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs or "mind-wandering").

Four experiments demonstrated reduced frequency of TUTs with high compared to low perceptual load in a visual-search task. Alternative accounts in terms of increased demands on responses, verbal working memory or motivation were ruled out and clear effects of load were found for unintentional TUTs. Individual differences in load effects on internal (TUTs) and external (response-competition) distractors were correlated. These results suggest that exhausting attentional capacity in task-relevant processing under high perceptual load can reduce processing of task-irrelevant information from external and internal sources alike.